Jason Dodge and Caroline Knox talk about art

January 16, 2014
ART
JASON DODGE AND CAROLINE KNOX
“Poems are practical:” Jason Dodge and Caroline Knox talk about art, poetry, and reading.
Jason Dodge, White to rose light, rose to white light over and over.. All photos courtesy of Casey Kaplan and Jason Dodge.
Photo credit: Jean Vong.
I will meet Caroline Knox for the first time face to face on Saturday, but I have known her somehow over the years
through her work. A friend was looking at the covers of the new 500 Places volumes, and instead of opening a
book he asked, “What are Caroline Knox’s poems like?” and I thought of her book Quaker Guns, and how a Quaker
and a gun contradict each other until it is a log covered in tar that only looks like a cannon, and then I thought, Yes!
That describes her work somehow. Then I remembered her poem “Flemish,” which is set up like a postcard. There
are two Flemish paintings, a recipe for strawberries, an inventory of the items in the two paintings, and the simple
phrase ‘”Oh Flanders! A / Benelux country, a Low Country.”
I truly hope everyone has a chance to read Caroline Knox’s poems. It was a thrill for me to be able to chat with her
for this piece.
— Jason Dodge
Caroline Knox What in your work of art and sculpture turned you to publishing and to publishing poets, rather than
to another art, like music or cooking? And what directed you toward the poets once you started on this?
Jason Dodge My relationship to literature has been, you could say, single-minded. Because I don’t really have the
ability to read so much. I think this is the case for many artists, that a lot of us found visual arts because they were
something that gave permission to a different kind of brain. While my disbelief cannot be suspended by a novel, I
can handle the intensity and the complexity. So, poetry has been my sort of singular relationship to literature for a
long time.
CK That’s very nice. It’s very cogent.
JD And I just noticed that in my own working and thinking, that I was getting my greatest inspiration from reading
poetry. Poems that are being written now. And that was just so exciting for me to finally stumble across a way to
start to think about how can I try to get people, other people, whose artwork I love so much, to read some of the
poetry that I love so much.
CK Also, poems are practical, and workable. I think that’s really part of why I never wanted to write a short story
or a novel; because I was busy being thrown into the parameters of whatever poem I was working on at the time.
What you said makes a lot of sense to me.
JD Well, one of the things that drew me to your work is something that I don’t know if I necessarily have the words
to describe; it’s the relation to poetry or to literature in a good solid way. One of the things that really drew me to
your writing was a kind of a detail and a distance, a placement, an atmosphere, a distraction, ways in which you
use language to somehow locate or to dislocate me as I was reading it.
CK Thank you!
JD Just that idea of the incredible detail of the title. Just taking the title and looking at it in a different way, and
then talking about your daughter knowing how to make the strawberries levitate. And then all of a sudden you’re
back in Flanders, the lowlands, and just the way in which there’s a kind of…it’s not a distance in the same vision,
and a closeness in the same vision. It’s a distance with a certain flatness at times and at other times a kind of
connectedness, and a detail with a kind of intimacy or also a kind of flatness. And I love that those are the sort of
moments in which I’m trying to find out, in a sense, where I am. Like if there are poems of yours where I feel like
I’m having a conversation, and poems of yours where I feel like I’m playing a game. And I love that feeling.
CK I would hope that people would feel that way inside of each poem, in slightly different ways. I definitely wanted
all those objects and elements to be in “Flemish” together. Because some of them are just sort of throwaway, and
these painters from Flanders are really quite wonderful, but they have such screwball compositions!
And my daughter and my sister, those are all real quotes. “Hey, listen to me.” “No, listen to me.” I think it’s quite,
well, human comedy, you know. And I like to include together in a poem, as much as I possibly can, things that
don’t belong there, and make a kind of context for them. And you know, have fanciness right next to imbecility.
And have prosaic next to something sublime. And I also like to have a lot of objects in my poems. So, I’m very
interested in the process of making a poem, and not interested at all in making an idea clear to the reader.
JD I think that is another point in which I identify with you very much. It is the age-old question of what somebody’s
objective is, and how that always seems to me as if one doesn’t get to decide that.
CK Why would you want to? But people do, sometimes.
JD They do! My grandfather, who I love very much, said to me when I was quite young something that stays with
me, and just often repeats itself in my mind, which is that it’s not what something means, it’s the way something
means.
CK What a wonderful thing to leave with your grandchild.
JD It has guided me in so many different ways
CK It’s permission, and generous permission, to find things out.
JD One of the things I’m interested in is how you would describe your reading life. When I read your poems I get
the sense of peering into a bookshelf filled with just a million different things that I never could guess.
CK Well, yes, and I read quite a few poets. I’ve tried to read a lot of the 500 Places poets. They’re friends, and I
have always read them. And going back, I’m an Auden-Stevens person, and a New York School of Poetry person,
in order to get refreshed about the inductiveness of making stuff, and putting things into poetry that haven’t been
there yet. Because all of those poets tried to do that, and did do it. And Kenneth Koch said, “We didn’t see any
reason to avoid humor.” That was one way to put it.
I try to include word games. And I try to include history, and I’m interested in having other periods of English in my
English. And also demotic things like Valley Girl talk. Recently I was listening to somebody on the subway. She
said, “We went to the mall, we went to sports bar and that.” What does “and that” mean? It means etcetera to you
and me, but that’s how she said it: “and that.” And it meant something, it was very meaningful to her. And so I kept
it, and made it be in a poem. And that’s another local kind of English that I love to catch elements of.
JD But sometimes I also get a sense, in your book, of technical writing, writing that maybe isn’t written with the
intention of being looked at with the scrutiny that one would look at a novel, or a piece of good non-fiction, or even
poetry. Do you read things that come from other kinds of sources?
CK I like to take technical jargon and use it in a sense that it isn’t meant to be, but I’m not much of a techy person.
It would have been fun to use a lot, a lot more technical language, like from IT, and be able to use it in poetry, along
with other things. Are you good at those things?
JD No, not even remotely.
CK It’s a mystery! I think mystery in all of art is a sacramental, don’t you?
Jason Dodge, What We Keep Doing to Ourselves.
JD I do. And it’s something that I struggle with. I think it’s a curious moment in visual arts, because more people are
making art work now than ever before in history. And more artists are living from their art than ever before.
CK Isn’t that fabulous?
JD It is. It’s fabulous and fascinating, and sometimes I also feel as if the role that art is expected to serve in some
people’s minds is not a role that engages me at all. And that it would be something that would be, well, something
pleasing or entertaining or decorative or useful, in a way that I always thought of other things as being useful. Or if I
think of how I use things, or how my family and I lived with things at home, they’re very different—
CK Like a can opener.
JD Yeah. Like, a can-opener can be celebrated as just the right can opener, or an interesting can opener, or a
funny can opener, but it’s not a work of art, unless that decision has been made. But I’m hoping that art has the
ability to diversify itself to such an extreme that film can. You wouldn’t look at a film about an Iranian boy that
collects crushed cans on the side of the road the same way that you would look at the most recent blockbuster that
you can also watch in 3D. But, they’re both films. I’m hoping that art goes into this direction of being something
which can be seen and consumed in many different ways, and have a role in different people’s lives. One of the
things I love about poetry and what I think I’m interested in about this press, is that I know that many of the people
who have these books—or who have them but haven’t read them yet—may be reading poetry for the first time,
but are very well established in their minds and read other very complex things besides poetry. They are a ripe
audience for poetry, but poetry is coming into their homes as a sort of mini Trojan horse, whereas something like
The New Yorker is kind of a big Trojan horse of poetry. It’s bringing poetry into so many peoples’ homes. Read or
unread, they’re still there, and I love that.
CK Some of the poets were your friends already, right?
JD Well, Matthew and Michael Dickman I got to know because I sort of tracked them down just before Michael’s
first book came out, and after Matthew’s first book was published. By a series of coincidences, my friend Alex was
going to Portland to work with a band there, right when The New Yorker did a profile of them, and I said, “See, Alex!
Jason Dodge, Electric.
They’re real poets. You can go find them for me, because I can’t find them because they don’t work for a university
so I can’t find their emails.” And so he went and it turned out that Matthew was making the sandwiches that the
band was eating, at the local Whole Foods. That’s how we got in touch and just naturally fell into a conversation
that takes many forms, considering we live on opposite sides of the planet. But we’ve had plenty of opportunities to
spend lots of time together recently, which has been great.
CK I’m glad that those Dickman brothers are having such a lot of attention.
JD Well, they’re great advocates of poetry. I mean, they’re really great people to bring poetry to people who have
never read poetry.
And they have real passion for what they’re doing. It’s their whole life. Which is what’s exciting for me, because
they’re really the first poets that I’ve gotten to know well. Most of the people I contact for the press are people who
I just contact in the same way that I wrote to you. I find the email address some way, and just say, “I really like what
you’re doing, would you be interested in doing something in a different context?”
Jason Dodge’s current exhibition, “We Are the Meeting,” is on view at Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York through
February 22.
Caroline Knox’s eighth book, Flemish, appeared from Wave Books in 2013. Her work has been in American Scholar, A
Public Space, Boston Review, Harvard, New Republic, Paris Review, Yale Review, Poetry, and elsewhere.
“ ‘Poems are practical:’ Jason Dodge and Caroline Knox talk about art, poetry, and reading,” Bomblog, January 16, 2014. Online.
January 9, 2014
Jason Dodge’s Poetic
Conceptualism
by Brienne Walsh
To the uninitiated, Jason Dodge’s exhibition “We Are the Meeting,”
opening today at New York’s Casey Kaplan Gallery, might appear to be a
collection of unconnected, lost objects. At the door is a paper bag full of
organic groceries. As the visitor walks into the gallery she sees a lightning rod
and a white chimney lying alongside each other; an electrical cable whose
plug lies in an aquarium full of water; and a brass shaft running along the
floor and containing poisonous hemlock seeds. There’s also an installation of
rose and white fluorescent lights that are constantly being changed out by the
gallery staff, so that the room’s illumination frequently changes color.
But once the Pennsylvania-born, Berlin-based Dodge himself begins to
explain the work, the logic behind the exhibition (through Feb. 22) begins to
reveal itself. “It has to do with what we live with,” Dodge told A.i.A., “what is
in the landscape of things that are made by people.”
The bag of groceries is thus not just a bag of groceries—rather, Dodge, 44, explained, it is actual food we choose to put in our bodies
as well as a symbol of our interconnectedness with the world. Identical mobile phones with SIM cards that Dodge had his friends
collect from various locations to which they traveled—Mongolia, Georgia, Israel and Brazil—also highlight the way that the vastness
of the world is compressed in the products we consume.
The title of each work is descriptive—North: A chimney points north, for example, and The Mayor is Sleeping: A pillow that has only been slept
on by the mayor of Nuremberg. They tell the viewer exactly what the object is, and nothing more. “The work being passive is very
important to me,” Dodge explained. “I see the people who come to the work as conduits rather than receivers.”
Many people may come into the exhibition and not get it. But a few will see, for example, the work made up of a stick of deodorant
and a pile of tissues, and find their own meaning. For Dodge, the work arouses melancholy. “It’s about the idea that we’re covering up
sweat, preventing it from happening,” he said. But he doesn’t expect others to see that in the work. “There’s far more potential in not
saying what it’s about,” he says.
Among the artists of his generation, Dodge most identifies with poets, which is part of the reason why he recently began
fivehundredplaces, a printing press for poetry books by the likes of Carl Phillips and Matthew Dickman. Although he himself didn’t
draw the comparison between his work and poetry, there are similarities between the exhibition and a poem. The latter can be a brief
set of four or five lines that a reader comes upon in a moment, and feels inexplicably connected to. Dodge hopes that certain viewers
will have a similar experience with his work. “To be an artist, you have to say something no one else can say in the way you’re saying
it,” he explains. “That’s the part you can’t learn.”
We are the meeting.
Jason Dodge
January 9 – February 22, 2014
Opening: Thursday, January 9, 6 – 8pm
Reading with Fivehundred Places: Saturday, January 11, 4pm
Dear Jason,
To anticipate an exhibition by you in the gallery has always given me an unusual sense of exhilaration. A sensation similar
for me to staring out at the ocean – giving me space to think about phenomena that I cannot experience but that I know
exist. It is exciting, but in an uncertain way. Uncertain because I tell part of the story, which is not clear until the moment
that it happens.
Hence,
We are the meeting.
In the last exhibition at the gallery, you connected a copper pipe in the main space to the water supply for the gallery and
ran it out into the center of the room. At the end of the pipe was something similar to a hose crank handle and a small
paper tag attached to the pipe that read, “Build a great Aquarium”. A few years later the gallery flooded and was
destroyed. Years of work and the lives of many paintings, sculptures, documents, ephemera, prints, photographs,
writing, and more were lost. These objects had so much history, and so much potential. The history of the space
changed in a surge, flowing in and out, like a breath. We all think about it differently, remember it differently, and a
different energy now persists.
Seeing aquariums in the space will be hard. Drawing a line around the electrical charge of the space gives visual and
physical life to this energetic presence. Smoke from the chimney is absent, and the sky is turned on its side. Voices and
sounds from Mongolia, Georgia, Israel and Brazil, will be trapped inside devices that send them across oceans, forests,
deserts and skies, and the gallery itself will breathe light instead of water, from rose to white, white to rose.
A hint of Optimism...
I just read this in Matthew Dickman’s poem:
“A Buddhist monk will wake up early on Sunday morning and not be a fork and not be a knife, he will look down at the
girl sleeping in his bed like a body of water, he will think about how he lifted her up like a spoon to his mouth all night, and
walk into the courtyard and pick up the shears and cut a little part of me, and lie me down next to her mouth which is
breathing heavily and changing all the dark in the room to light.”
It is so beautiful.
I can't wait, thanks Jason.
Love, L
The gallery will hold a reading in collaboration with Fivehundred Places, a new poetry press established by Jason Dodge in Berlin in
order to promote a dialogue between contemporary art and poetry. Participating poets include: Michael Dickman, Caroline Knox,
Dorothea Lasky, Anna McDonald, M.A. Vizsolyi, and Susan Wheeler
Jason Dodge’s work is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery, on view through January 26. Dodge additionally
published a two-volume catalogue with the Henry Art Gallery including a book of letters between Dodge and poet Matthew Dickman. In
2013, Dodge participated in the 12th Biennale de Lyon, the 9th Bienal do Mercosul, and oO, the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice
Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include The American Academy in Rome, Rome, 2013, LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Linz, 2013,
Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nürnberg, 2012, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania, 2011, I woke up. There was a note in my pocket explaining what had
happened, Kunstverein Hannover, Germany, traveled to La Galerie, Noisy le Sec, France (2010).
For further information, please contact Loring Randolph or Alice Conconi, loring@caseykaplangallery.com and
alice@caseykaplangallery.com
GALLERY HOURS: TUESDAY – SATURDAY, 10:00AM – 6:00PM
UPCOMING:
HAROLD ANCART, KEVIN BEASLEY, MATEO LÓPEZ, FEBRUARY 27 – APRIL 26, 2014
!HENNING BOHL, MATTHEW BRANNON, JEFF BURTON, NATHAN CARTER, JASON DODGE, TRISHA DONNELLY, GEOFFREY FARMER,
LIAM GILLICK, GIORGIO GRIFFA, ANNIKA VON HAUSSWOLFF, BRIAN JUNGEN, SANYA KANTAROVSKY, JONATHAN MONK, MARLO PASCUAL, DIEGO PERRONE, PIETRO
ROCCASALVA, JULIA SCHMIDT, SIMON STARLING, DAVID THORPE, GABRIEL VORMSTEIN, GARTH WEISER, JOHANNES WOHNSEIFER
Jason Dodge: What we have done.
ON VIEW THROUGH JANUARY 26
STROUM GALLERY
This winter, the Henry is hosting the first comprehensive presentation in North America of works by artist Jason Dodge (Germany,
born U.S. 1969). The exhibition features eight pieces, including the premiere of two new works. The first gives the exhibition its name.
What we have done. is composed of four massive industrial rolls of newsprint loaned to the Henry by The Seattle Times. Pristine and
unprinted, the four rolls weigh nearly one ton each and when unrolled measure almost twelve miles in length. During the course of the
exhibition, they inhabit the gallery as works of art, and then, every three weeks, one of the rolls is removed and returned to The Times
where it ceases being an art object and returns to its role as a receptacle of print, reappearing as newspapers ready for distribution.
By the close of the exhibition, all four rolls will be gone. The passage of these newsprint rolls through the museum asks open-ended
guestions about process, and about the fluid and transient nature of the art object.
For Dodge’s second new piece, The living, a group of animals from a local farm were brought in to run free and feed in one of the
Henry’s galleries during the installation period, with no audience present. At the artist’s reguest there is no visual record (film or
photographs) of this event, just its memory as told by the artist and, by extension, the institution. The traces of organic materials that
remain on the floor are the marks of the passage of many live animals, which not unlike the paper rolls, are foreign to art institutions.
The final form of The living is far from narration or description; though cryptic and stark, it is still faithful to what happened here.
Dodge’s sculptures are the result of performative actions that mostly take place out of public view. This mode of working encapsulates
a radical gesture that references the transformative nature of sculpture: a log carved to become the effigy of a saint, molten metal
that becomes a massive bell, or a stone that is carved into a column to commemorate a past event. Dodge borrows from daily life
to highlight narratives that are egually present in the life of humble or precious objects. He also reveals that physical spaces are in
constant transformation through our individual and collective actions.
Whether or not we witnessed the events that led to the making of the works included in the exhibition, the artist suggests that we
can still experience, imagine, and be part of them. Dodge’s ultimate aim is to create and elicit a personal, intellectual, and emotional
experience; one that is borne out of his ability to stretch time and his deep appreciation and understanding of the poetic and real
potential of objects and of space.
Jason Dodge: What we have done. is curated by Luis Croquer, Deputy Director of Exhibitions ond Collections. The exhibition is made possible by a major grant from our
Presenting Sponsor, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Additional funding was generously provided by The Boeing Company and Henry Season Sponsor ArtsFund.
Henry exhibitions are also supported by gifts to the Henry Now Campaign from the Barton Family Foundation in memory of Irving Marcus; Cathy and Michael
Casteel; the Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation; William and Ruth True; and the Bagley and Virginia Wright Fund. Presenting Sponsor THE PAUL G. ALLEN FAMILY
FOUNDATION
Ongoing Exhibition: Jason Dodge, Henry Art Gallery newspaper, January - April 2014, p. 3.
November 6, 2013
ROMANTIC EMPTINESS Newsprint, clean linen, livestock detritus, and pillows.
An Acrobat’s Pillow
The Strict Art of What’s Not There
by Jen Graves
Down low in the museum in a high-ceilinged room with pretty wood floors, the overhead lights have gone a little
green. The room is nearly empty. It’s the largest in the Henry Art Gallery, built for long vistas and big sculptures
that would bust the walls of lesser rooms, but right now, it looks like a school gymnasium put to some nebulous
after-hours use. Four enormous rolls of industrial newsprint sit on the floor. Also on the floor: five tightly
plastic-wrapped piles of folded white towels, two purple pillows, two light-blue pillows. One wall has two doors.
Another wall is studded with three lightbulbs. That’s all, and in no way all.
There’s a handout with a map at the entrance containing necessary words. About the color-coded pillows, it
says, “Pillows that have only been slept on by acrobats” (purple) and “Pillows that have only been slept on by
Ornithologists” (light-blue). The piles of plastic-wrapped towels are titled Anyone. Their medium is “Bed linen in
weekly rotation by a linen service.” They sit unopened here, in between uses future and past. How clean are clean
towels? The handout is important because it embodies the idea that you must “take the word of ” the artist, Jason
Dodge; he uses the medium of language to fill in what’s there even if you can’t see it. The pillows were slept on,
and only by acrobats and/or ornithologists. A local hotel does, really, bring new piles of plastic-wrapped towels
to the gallery every few days and take the old piles back to be used. The rolls of newsprint are borrowed from
the Seattle Times, and one by one, over the duration of the art show, each roll will be taken back to the factory to
become newspapers, leaving empty spots in the gallery.
Dodge arranged all this by asking acrobats, ornithologists, a local hotel, and the Seattle Times to play along.
One imagines these conversations were interesting. Another conversation: Dodge arranged for a local farm to
bring animals into the Henry for a residency. You won’t see them—nobody did, except those directly involved,
and no photos were taken. When the animals left, the museum removed their bio-matter (you cannot just
have shit sitting out in an art museum), but kept their scuff marks and bits of straw and dirt all across the floor.
There’s an idyllic, romantic emptiness here, with a certain faint, untraceable scent: one way to represent what
happens when artless living creatures get their turn in the frame of art. Museums and galleries can be cold and
disappointing places.
Dodge’s requirements can be strict: Even a catnap by someone other than the ornithologist—her husband,
mistaking one pillow in their bed for another, one imagines—and that pillow is null and void. Are acrobats or
ornithologists more likely to dream of flying? These unspoken conversations are part of the art, too, the ones
that happened as people were drying themselves off in hotel rooms or drivers were hauling newsprint back
toward the factory, or every draft of the stories that appeared in those papers, or the photographs that didn’t
run but that the photographer wished had. The objects in the galleries are parts of stories shared by the artist,
the subject, the sculptor, and you, imagining what’s happening the way you might envision your own version
of the specific world of any given novel. The future itself assembles, written down in black and white and
photographed, rising up on the surfaces of these big blank rolls and going out into ears and mouths and the
crawl spaces of new thoughts. All these spoken and unspoken conversations rise up around the objects in great
clouds of narrative.
Dodge calls the newspaper piece What we have done., and that’s also the title of the whole museum exhibition:
Jason Dodge: What we have done. The handout refers to this as “the artist’s first comprehensive exhibition
in North America.” Dodge is American, born in 1969 in Newton, Pennsylvania, now living in Berlin.
Comprehensive is a funny word in Dodgeworld. There are eight pieces here, not including several shown
previously in Seattle (at Western Bridge). If What we have done. is “comprehensive,” it’s only in the way that any
of Dodge’s sculptures is comprehensive—as a complete and specific simple object that cannot be exchanged
with any other, but imaginatively unbounded, with so many parts present but unseen, like the way the weight of
a head changes the shape of a pillow over time. The phrase What we have done. itself is a demonstration of the
condition: Styled with a period, it comes across as a finished thought in the past tense, referring to something
that already exists, a closed set. But “what we have done” grows every moment, and who could remember all
that they’ve done, and who could know all we’ve done? We don’t even know each other.
What we have done. has an implied twin phrase, the more common “what have we done.” One sounds
accomplished, the other despairing. The exhibition is also divided in two: one section containing The living (the
leavings of the animals), and the other section the pillows, towels, and newsprint rolls. There’s a wall between
the two sides, with two doors, and each door is actually two doors—you open one to find yourself face-to-face
with the back of another door, so each time you go through, the act of going out a door switches you instead
into going in one. Furthering the doublemania, the doors turn out to be slightly different sizes, a fact not at first
apparent, which results in another mental twinning: what something actually looks like, and what you think it
looks like. That paragraph was more fun to write (and, one hopes, to read) than the art was to interact with in
the gallery.
There are only two other pieces, made of lightbulbs and a bell. They hang on a wall at the exhibition’s midpoint,
casting light on both sides. One is two bulbs facing each other very close in, forming a little witticism, a perfect
visual phrase. The other is A signal bell tuned to C inside a wall, marked by lights. Yes, the bell is really in there.
No, you cannot hear it.
Graves, Jen. “An Acrobat’s Pillow: The Strict Art of What’s Not There,” The Stranger, November 6, 2013. Online.
Henry Art Gallery
FALL/WINTER 2013
Jason Dodge:
What We Have Done
OCTOBER 19 - JANUARY 26
STROUM GALLERY
Entering a Jason Dodge exhibition a viewer may be struck by its
seeming emptiness and deceived by its apparent simplicity. The
artist works by placing collections of objects - some familiar, others
not - in the galleries to create broad associations between them,
often introducing us to finished, truncated, or open-ended narratives
via descriptive titles that can sometimes be a few lines long. Some
recount how the works were made, others suggest what they
could be or even add a sense of impending danger with troubling
information that declares them unfinished as a playful challenge
for the viewer to ponder. In every case, the succinct text relates to
the piece itself, but extends far beyond it, igniting our imagination,
interpretive skills, and heightening our sense of presence and
responsibility in front of art.
Dodge’s sculptures are made in “performative” ways and are almost
always discrete to the point of being–at times – imperceptible.
These artworks intently mark their location and reveal meaning, not
by declaring loudly or literally their objecthood, but by transmitting
bits of information to the viewer, activating our cognitive skills, and
awakening our senses.
The artist’s interest in literature and, in particular, poetry informs
his practice. Dodge is interested in and hyper-aware of the
architectural context and the physical conditions of the gallery
spaces where he shows, treating them similarly to a blank sheet of
paper that awaits information. He is also deeply cognizant that his
works as units are like words that hold numerous meanings and that
fit together in different arrangements can form ambiguous sentences
that in turn create experiences, which can profoundly reconfigure
a site. Dodge’s aim is always to illicit a personal and emotional
experience that is born out of his ability to stretch time and also his
appreciation and understanding of the poetic and real potential of
space. What We Have Done, the artist’s first comprehensive exhibition
in North America, will create an experiential journey that will
Jason Dodge, Copper pipes connected to the water supply, your dear,
sub-marine, Collection William and Ruth True
Jason Dodge was born in 1969 in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and lives and works in
Berlin, Germany. Recently he has had solo shows at the Lenton Museum, in Linz
Austria, the Albrecht Durrer Gesselshaft/Kunstverein Nurnberg, CAC Vilnius,
Lithuania, the Hannover Kunstverein and the American Academy, Rome, Italy. He
has participated in La triennale, at the Palais de Tokyo, curated by Okwui Enwezor,
The 2013 Bienal do Mercosul, in Porto Allegre Brazil, the 2013 Biennale de Lyon, and
the 2013 Venice Biennale curated by Massimiliano Gioni. In the United States he has
had a solo exhibition at the Orange County Museum in 2004 and has been part of
group exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, the MCA Chicago, MOCAD, Detroit, and
Western Bridge in Seattle.
Jason Dodge: What We Have Done is curated bu Luis Croquer, deputy director of art and aducation. The
exhibition is made possible with the generousity of our Presenting Sponsor, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
Funding is also provided throughout gifts made to the Henry Now Campaign by the Barton Family Foundation
include both recent and new work. A publication will be produced in
in memory of Irving Marcus; Cathy and Michael Casteel; the Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation; WIlliam and Ruth
conjunction with the project. True; and Bagley and Virginia Wright Fund. Presenting Sponsor The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
Jason Dodge
08.27.13
Jason Dodge, A permanently open window. Photo: C. Dario Lasagni.
Jason Dodge’s first permanent installation is located in the tower of a former MaxMara electrical factory,
adjacent to the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy. A permanently open window consists of
a window that is perpetually ajar, two cedar doors, and a sculpture titled Alphabet. Dodge is known for
works that poetically defy everyday perception, and here he discusses the specificities of transforming
this window into a “beacon.”
FUNDAMENTALLY, I’m interested in abstraction, and presence. I was thinking about how I wanted to
make an abstract body that is not obviously detectable but could potentially be present in exhibitions on
a molecular level, an alphabet. Much of my work concentrates on the notion of how something means
something as opposed to what something means, and this flexibility of perception drives the way a work
is seen and experienced. I’m not dictating how it is experienced; I’m just dictating a realm of possible
situations based on what is perceived.
A permanently open window began several years ago. I was considering the site of the work, the warehouse, as a place where Luigi Maramotti played as a child. I had a thought about making a beacon that
could somehow be rooted in a memory of a place that someone has known for their entire life—a place
that has been renovated and repurposed. I was interested in working with the tower, but also with the notion of air going through the window, and so I made, in a sense, a window that’s open forever—since it’s
described as being permanently open. It blocks the building from being repurposed again.
If you were to visit the window, a staff member would give you a key and walk you over. Then you
would open the door and go into the tower if you wanted. When you see the work from the outside,
however, you don’t get the sense of it being even remotely accessible. You really get the sense that it’s
not an accessible window—it has a reticent distance. It’s not a light leading you home or something
like that; it’s not a window that seems to be open for a reason.
Yet once you’re inside, the work questions what it means to see something that changes depending on
what time of day it is, what the weather’s like, what time of year it is, and so on. I’m interested in that
movement of perception in terms of abstraction, but also I think it’s important to be able to recognize
what something is. If you went in and there were a bird in there, which there very well could be, it
would change the whole thing. The Maramotti staff agreed not to put any kind of netting or anything
like that to keep animals from going in. It has to just be what it is.
I am not interested in overtly mystical or spiritual notions. I think there is just something about presence, though. The core of my interest in most of the art I look at, which is mostly centuries or millennia old, stems from the fact that the people making it didn’t necessarily care about the subject, which
was already decided. And yet such art can tell you so much about presence, says something about
what it means to be a human, what it means to be alive.
— As told to Lauren O’Neill-Butler
JASON DODGE
a hole through speaking.
One could be forgiven for calling Jason Dodge a minimalist. The handful of rooms of his that I have been inside–although a
sculptor and therefore a maker of objects and handler of things, I think of him primarily as a creator or composer of spaces–
have all been sparse in the extreme. A low-lying stack of fluffed-up white pillows to the far right (as one enters the space);
copper tubing, discreetly snaking its way around a deserted Kunstverein (containing something); a single lightning rod on
the floor, almost (but not quite) parallel with the museum’s blank wall; and, most incongruous of all, almost spectacularly
so, a dead snowy owl hugging the edge of a booth at an art fair. Not much, in short. To call these works minimal, however,
would be to grossly miss the point of their secretive fullness. The spaces may appear minimal, perhaps, but the discreetly
positioned objects in them are anything but– they bristle and brim with silent life. Their secret ingredients can turn any room
into a clamoring, boisterous affair– something that is perhaps better named maximalist instead. (But let’s not.) And ‘what’ is
so palpably present in these voids is really a ‘who’: the people whose heads rested on these pillows, or whose hands wove a
cloth the color of the night; a veritable dynasty of bell-makers, fathers and sons; those who doused their home in the deepest
darkness after diligently screwing out every light bulb in the house, after handing over every lighter and candle; a rustling
swarm of notes left behind for debtors and loved ones; unknown, unknowable lives– throngs of ‘them’ and ‘they.’
Almost too much, in a way, because it is they, not a that– certainly nothing that could be brushed aside as the umpteenth
variation on that most tired and tedious and shopworn of all dictums, “less is more.” What’s more–
One could equally be forgiven for calling Jason Dodge a poet. He is a sculptor (maker of objects, handler of things), and
words, to a certain extent, have little to do with what he does in turn. Yet there is no mistaking the syntactic quality of
his peculiarly economic way with objects, things. The deliberate scansion that imbues his command of space–his material
phraseology, so to speak. One word, right there–and then a comma, there. The writer’s art of pacing and spacing, the poet’s
bellyaching over the precise order of three nouns on a page, for instance, resembles the artist’s serene resolution in devising
the right rhythm for a given space– and ‘empty’ is just what it looks like, not what it feels like.
Jason and I no longer live in the same city alas, but when we did we used to meet up every now and then for a couple of
beers in an inconspicuous little bar called San Remo and talk about poetry for an hour or two. His compatriot Kenneth Koch
never once came up, but I just read the opening lines of a poem of his that put all of this in fewer words of course: “In a
poem, one line may hide another line / As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.” Nothing less.
–Dieter Roelstraete
Roelstraete, Dieter. Jason Dodge: a through speaking. LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg: Germany, 2013.
Jason Dodge
22 March to 9 June 2013
Jason Dodge, Exhibition view, 2012, Kunstverein Nürnberg
Jason Dodge
Opening: 23 November 2012, 6.30 pm
Exhibition: 24 November 2012 – 17. February 2013
Born in 1969, Newton, United States – Lives in Berlin, Germany
“Generally, it is the people, the subjects that are lacking in what I do. I’m
talking to you about them, but they’re not there. It’s as if I were using
the feeling of loss as material.” In the artistic process of Jason Dodge,
viewing is inseparable from feeling. And it seems straightforward
enough, even natural. The artist’s works constantly put forth the
creative process, a story, an experience, and quite often discretely bear
the marks of an invisible collaboration.
For Intense Proximity, Jason Dodge presents a collection of several
works that attest to his penchant for hijacking objects from the
everyday, evoking the domestic universe, displacements and sound:
flutes, a scale, a pile of white sheets, a dark blue blanket, etc. But
no description could capture the complete sense alive in the objects.
For example, Above the Water is, at first glance, a blanket left on the
ground—the work is, in fact, the result of the artist’s order to a weaver
attempting represent the distance between the Earth and the sky and
choosing a shade of blue that resembled the night sky. Anyone, a pile of
sheets similarly left on the ground, is the most recent piece—replaced
weekly by a hotel laundry service, these sheets that are, in theory, not
interesting bear traces of hundreds of sleeping bodies, recorded in the
invisible history of its presence. Intriguing, disturbing, elusive, Dodge’s
creations often leave his public in a particular confusion. When asked
about this, the artist affirmed: “You don’t generally know what things
are by looking at them. Nor do you know what they were, what they
have inside of them or what they’ve touched—just like you are ignorant
to someone with a broken heart, someone carrying a gun, the amount
of electricity circulating, who wore that, what country are residents
connected to by this satellite. That’s how the world was made, I
find that it’s an interesting way to approach a work of art.” Distance
and proximity, indifference and intimacy, or how post-conceptual art
undertakes a poetic revival.
Jason Dodge In Nova Scotia, Jan de Graaf chose wool yarn the color of night, and wove the
distance from the earth to above the weather, 2011 Collection Cypanga, Paris Courtesy the artist.
© Horace Aand
http://www.latriennale.org/en/artists/jason-dodge
The Language
of Less
(Then and Now)
October 8, 2011- April 8, 2012
Preview October 6
Foregrounding MCA Chicago's belief
that history is always under constant
reappraisal, especially by artists,
The Language of Less (Then and Now) will
reintroduce now-classic Minimalist artworks
to the public alongside work by artists who
are reconfiguring this language for today-and
deservedly gaining international attention.
Artists such as Carl Andre, Donald Judd,
Sol LeWitt, and Richard Serra pioneered
a stripped-down aesthetic that allowed
audiences to focus on fundamental concepts
that shape our world, such as solids
and voids, repeating patterns, elemental
structures, and ancient principles of
proportion. From there, a clearer appreciation
of the world was offered, perhaps as a way of
establishing a firm footing in a period in the
late 1960s and early 1970s characterized by
social and political upheaval, war, and rapidly
evolving technology. In many ways, our
current situation can be similarly described,
and many artists are again returning to a
spare formal language to slow us down,
clarify thinking, and inspire reflection.
However, where the 1960s generation
largely sought to distance itself from the
heroic, emotive gestures of the abstract
expressionists by adopting a more
impersonal and neutral tone through their use
of industrial materials and repetitive patterns,
current practitioners are imbuing their
work with an increasing amount of poetic,
personal, and even romantic content.
Across the work of Leonor Antunes
(Berlin), Carol Bove (New York), Jason
Dodge (Berlin), Gedi Sibony (New York),
and Oscar Tuazon (Paris), visitors will
recognize a shared aesthetic of restraint,
but will also find a warmer, more
obviously humane, even domestic quality
to their efforts. Likewise, the established
canon of historical Minimalism has
been enriched in recent years by the
rediscovery of pioneering talents that
had slipped from view. The MCA has
responded to these revisions with recent
acquisitions by artists such as Tony
Conrad, Charlotte Posenenske, and
Franz Erhard Walther, all of which will
debut in The Language of Less. The dual
nature of the exhibition will provide a
historical context for understanding the
new developments among the younger
generation of artists, while also offering a
chance to reflect on the groundbreaking
rigor and elegance of the earlier artists
who made “Minimalism” part of our
collective parlance.
Michael Darling
James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator
Above: Charlotte Posenenske,
Series E Kleiner Drehflugel
(Small Revolving Vane), 1967~.
Lacquered sheet aluminum.
Dimensions variable.
Collection Museum of
Contemporary Art Chicago, gift
of Mary and Earle Ludgin by
exchange, 2011. 12.©1967-68
Charlotte Posenenske
Lead support for this
exhibition is generously
provided by Howard and
Danna Stone.
Major support 1S prOVided
by the Terra Foundation
tor American Art.
Additionol support is
provided by the Neisser
Family Fund, Jill and
Peter Kraus, the Robert
Lehman Foundation Inc.,
the Elizabeth F. Cheney
Foundation, and Greene
Nottali, New York.
TERRA
Foundation for American Art
The Language of Less
(Then and Now) exhibition
catalogue, edited by Michael
Darling
JASON DODGE
G: What music are you listening to right now?
I: A Symphony in D major by William Herschel. I’m
kind of in the mood for symphonies since last Tuesday.
G: What happened last Tuesday?
I
went to the planetarium. I dont know if it’s right to
say it here. I think maybe it would be better to ask
you the same question about music.
G
planetariums relate to Herschel.
I: At the planetarium someone was telling stories
22 04 11/22 05 11
mine who’s a musician told me the instruments in
were produced in the furniture factories. This is why
he plays a french sax made out of shell casings. The
series was produced in 1965. One of the best saxoWhen thinking about the dialogue between a bell and
a sound I guess it‘s a rather complex dialogue because
birth to the sound—you are the intruder and the possibility at the same time. So maybe it’s more accurate
them. This was the moment I got to know Herschel
listen to his symphonies. Maybe I shouldn’t mention
the planetarium yet.
G
pendance on a group called Lonely Galaxy is some-
to you and is of your making.
G
functions. This saxophone is a sophisticated piece
dreaming about listening to his music in a spaceship
sound the same there?
I
nitely distort the sound.
I’m thinking that this situation we are in is extremely
intentionally ready for a dialogue. Though we don‘t
method of this linguistic motion. It’s like an exercise.
I wonder if there are steady dialogue-practitioners.
Like yoga or something.
G
this exercise we are doing at the moment is an exresult of a dialogue beyond the words. You could tell
your idea about bell’s dialogue with its sound. I really
like it.
I
pen with a weather condition.
I: Let me see.
G: Did you go to the window?
I
It can somehow gather a light back together that was
possible that the air is full of people in the cylinders.
Tricky part of talking to weather though. Do you
want me to try?
G
people in cylinders in the air and the fact that Herschel was certain that the Sun was inhabited by creatures with enormous heads. He made this conclusion
after exploring spots on the surface of the Sun. In
a way that shows that sometimes you search for the
creatures to talk to instead of speaking to the weather
the window.
I
Jason Dodge. Solo show
2011 04 22 – 05 22
Opening on Friday 22 April at 6 pm
Artist’s lecture at the CAC Reading Room on Thursday 21 April at 7 pm
-
When I woke up, there was a note in my pocket explaining what had
happened
And for this I will call you the listener
The Bell Show
pear
Interval
Woodman, Woodman, Spare That Tree
L’exposition lunatique
Le Dernier Roman du Monde
The Quick and the Dead
Exhibition, Exhibition
Objects are like they apThe Happy
The Art of Tomorrow. Edited by Laura Hoptman, Yilmaz Dziewior, Uta
Grosenick, Distanz, Verlag, Germany, 2010. 114-117
114
1969 geboren in Newton, PA, USA,
lebt und arbeitet in Berlin, Deutschland
1969 born in Newton, PA, USA,
lives and works in Berlin, Germany
www.luettgenmeijer.com
www.massimodecarlo.it
www.yvon-lambert.com
marine
2009
Installation view, Kunstverein Hannover
JASON DODGE
Wenn man die sparsamen, scheinbar banalen
und doch elegant komponierten Anordnungen
von Objekten betrachtet - etwa eine Sammlung
von Glühbirnen, Kerzen und Streichholzern, ein
Paar Bratschensaiten oder eine einfache zusammengefaltete Decke, die mit einer weißen Schnur
umwickelt ist -, wurde man kaum glauben, dass
die Arbeiten von Jason Dodge zumeist eine
fantastische Erzahlung beinhalten. Doch sie
schließen nicht nur Geschichten mit ein, sondern
beruhen auch auf dem Glauben des Betrachters
daran und - was vielleicht noch wichtiger ist - auf
dem Vertrauen in sein eigenes Vorstellungsvermögen. So handelt es sich bei der erwahnten
Sammlung von Glühbirnen, Kerzen und anderem
um eine Arbeit mit dem Titel Darkness falls on
(2005);
sie besteht aus allen Arten von Leuchtmitteln, die
sich in einem Haus an einem Waldrand in Polen
befanden.
Die beiden Bratschensaiten in The Viola of Béla
Bartók (2007) wurden von zwei Bratschen abgenommen, die nur ein einziges Mal benutzt
wurden, um die namengebenden Bratschenduos
von Bartok zu spielen. Die sorgsam zusammengelegte Decke ist eigentlich ein Wandteppich,
der von der Algerierin Djidjiga Meffrer aus einem
“nachtfarbenen” (wie der Kunstler formuliert)
Faden gewebt wurde, dessen Lange von der
Erde bis uber das Wetter reicht - daher der Werktitel Above the Weather (2007).
In allen Fallen verlangt die Geschichte vom Betrachter einen beinahe wissenschaftlichen Optimismus, um in die narrative Sphare vorzudringen, die jedem seiner Werke innewohnt, und es
dadurch von seiner anfanglichen Unergründlichkeit zu erlösen. Zudem wird die Herstellung einer
Arbeit, ganz im Geist von Alighiero Boetti, oft an
einen Mitarbeiter delegiert - der immer namentlich
genannt wird und daher für die Wahrhaftigkeit
des Werkes ausdrucklich Mitverantwortung tragt
- und an einen fernen Ort verlegt. Dadurch wird
die Sinntrachtigkeit des ganzen unwahrscheinlichen Szenarios gesteigert. Dodges romantische
und dichte Verschmelzungen von Objekten, Erzahlungen, Zeiten und verschiedenen Orten, die
an andere Welten denken lassen, umgibt eine
treffsichere
und starke Poesie.
You might never guess by looking at his spare,
seemingly banal, and yet elegantly composed
conjunctions of objects—from a collection
of bulbs, candles, and matches to a pair of
viola strings or a simple, folded-up blanket
with a white string around it—that the work
of Jason Dodge almost always contains a fantastical narrative. Not only does it contain a
narrative, it depends on it as well as on the
viewer’s faith in narrative, and perhaps even
more importantly, the viewer’s faith in his or
her own imagination. For instance, the abovementioned collection of bulbs, candles, etc. is
a work entitled Darkness falls on Wotkowyja
(2005), and consists of every form of illumination taken from
a house on the edge of a forest in Poland.
The pair of viola strings in The Viola of Béla
Bartók (2007) were taken off a pair of violas
after they had been used only once to play
the eponymous Bartók duos. The neatly folded blanket is actually a tapestry woven by a
woman in Algeria named Djidjiga Meffrer from
that equals the distance from the earth to
above the weather—hence the title Above the
Weather (2007).
In each case, the story requires that the viewthe narrative ether that demurely lurks within
each work, thus redeeming it from any initial
inscrutability. What is more, in the spirit of
Alighiero Boetti, the labour of each piece is
often outsourced to a collaborator who is always named and therefore explicitly complicit
in its veracity—and displaced to a distant
location, which gives the whole, implausible
scenario even more evocative teeth. Redolent
of elsewhere, Dodge’s romantic and compact
disparate places deal in a deft and powerful
poetry.
Chris Sharp
116
JASON DODGE
Exhibition view, 2008
Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin
117
from the earth to above the weather; she
the weather
2008
Darkness falls on
Källhamra, 646 96, Stjä
2008
2008
Jason Dodge
CASEY KAPLAN GALLERY
Jason Dodge,
Your moveable and
un-moveable parts /
a broken furnace
removed from house,
and a box / that
carried a new furnace,
2009, mixed media
dimensions variable.
From Trisha Donnelly to Jonathan Monk to Simon Starling, Casey
Kaplan Gallery represents a number of artists whose conceptually
inflected artwork constructs or relies upon narrative scaffolding. So,
too, does Jason Dodge’s slow- burn art. His sixth exhibition at this
gallery was visually unprepossessing
but upon reflection revealed engaging
emotional and psychological complexities. Take, for example, in order of
imagined altitude / an astronomer, a
meteorologist, an ornithologist, a geologist, and a civil engineer, cut pockets
from their trousers (all works 2009).
One would be hard -pressed to know,
without the title, what to make of the
small pile of pieces of fabric resting on
a pedestal. The idiosyncratic professional hierarchy suggested by the
arrangement, funny on its own, is buttressed by knowledge of Above the
Weather, 2007, an earlier work (not in
this show) for which Dodge commissioned
a Polish woman to knit a length
of yarn equivalent to the distance from
the surface of the earth to the height
at which one is “above the weather.”
Together, these sculptures manifest Dodge’s sky-gazing Romantic conflation of science and poetry, perhaps akin to that of the enthusiastic
amateurs Richard Holmes describes in his appropriately titled recent
book Age of Wonder (2008).
As evidenced in the rest of this exhibition, for Dodge, poetry most
often takes precedence. That was the show’s chief strength and its primary
liability. As flat-footed works such as light and glove or sleeping
bag / air / a tenor recorder suggest, it can be exceedingly difficult to
communicate to viewers the ineffable meanings that cling to demure
arrangements of everyday object. Your moveable and un-moveable
parts / a broken furnace removed from house, and a box / that carried
a new furnace demonstrates the limit of this methodology at its other
extreme. The objects Dodge selected-a broken furnace and the box
of its replacement-suggest rich connection to both a city’s arterial
infrastructure systems and to the lives once and soon to be literally
warmed by the furnace. It is his self-concious intervention into this
arrangement, two small pieces of pink paper on which the word VIOLINS
is written, that comes off as affected and twee. A current (electric) /
through / (A) tuning fork / and light achieves a better balance. No more
than a lightbulb whose long electrical cord has been sliced open to allow
the copper wiring to be soldered to the ends of a tuning fork, the sculpture prompts koanlike questions such as, What is the sound of light?
The strongest artwork in the exhibition alone proved the value of
Dodge’s explorations at the edge of sentimentality. (Its descriptive title
is too long to reproduce here.) To make the work, Dodge typed a
woman’s full married name, divided into syllables, on narrow strips of
paper that he affixed to the legs of homing pigeons, which returned to
Berlin from Krakow, Poland. He did the same for the woman’s maiden
name, though this time the pigeons carried the paper slips from western
Ohio to New York. Her Germanic maiden name, Eleanor M. Edelmann,
hints at a personal history that might likewise have included an emigration from Krakow or Berlin to the United States. A missing syllable
in her maiden name-what happened to that pigeon?-underscores
the extreme uncertainty of any such flight. These conceptually linked
journeys can also be tied to the risky, speculative process of artmaking
itself. By installing the framed slips of paper on opposing walls, Dodge
summoned a poignant affective charge that even the most detached
viewer would have difficulty not feeling.
-Brian Sholis
178 frieze June July August 2010
Jason Dodge
Your Death, Submarine,
Copper Pipes Connected
to Water
2009
Copper piping, cardboard
and a tap
Dimensions variable
__________________________________________
Kunstverein Hannover, Germany
__________________________________________
Visiting a Jason Dodge exhibition is like a journey
in which imagination is your compass and the
limits of time and space expand. If this is true of
presentations that take place in small galleries,
it was even more so in the spacious rooms of the
Kunstverein Hannover, where Dodge presented
his most comprehensive show to date. In an
almost circular path that led through five rooms,
a selection of works from 2004 to 2010 seemed
to be floating in the institution’s immaculate
white space under only natural light.Grouped
together following more or less close associations, or left alone in rather mysterious isolation,
these works revealed themselves as fragments
of a larger plot as elusive as the exhibition’s
title: ‘I Woke up. There Was a Note in My Pocket
Explaining What Had Happened’.
Dodge’s works usually consist of objects or
groups of objects that have undergone different
stages of manipulation or transformation. Some
have been slightly altered: emeralds inserted
into the body of an owl (Emeralds Inside an
Owl, 2009); undeveloped photographic paper
exposed at sunrise on the vernal equinox in eight
different places around the world (Into Black,
2006);flutes stuffed with poison hemlock (one
of them titled Poison Hemlock in an Alto Flute,
2009). Others have been fabricated under the
artist’s instructions as described by the work’s
title: In Lübeck, Germany, Mariele Scholtz Wove
a Piece of Cloth. She Was Asked to Choose Yarn
the Color of Night and Equalling the Distance
(12 km) From the Earth to Above the Weather
(2008). Works also originate as elements
removed from domestic spaces: different devices
that produce light were taken from a house
at the edge of a forest in Sweden and strewn
across the floor (Darkness Falls on Källhamra,
646 96, Stjärnhov, 2009); a long copper pipe
traversed the exhibition space to be connected
with the water system on the roof (Your Death,
Submarine, Copper Pipes Connected to Water,
2009). Only recently has Dodge presented objects in the form of pure ready-mades, as in the
case of pillows that have only been slept on by
doctors (The Doctors Are Sleeping, 2010).
In Dodge’s work, objects act like carriers or
relics of actions that took place elsewhere, in
a distant time and place. Often the artist acts
as a kind of transmitter of a signal that takes
the form of instructions or requests to perform
a certain action or manufacture a particular
material. The action produces an object - a work.
The work embodies an elusive and often poetic
narrative, the veracity of which viewers aren’t
quite assured. Evoking an action that took place
somewhere far beyond our gaze, the evanescence of a natural phenomenon or a mental image, these objects reverberate with an absence
that produces a sense of permanent longing.
Dodge’s work is imbued with contant references
to the world of natural phenomena, alchemical
processes and the way materials, actions and
stories are possibly interconnected. Many of his
works represent a world sustained by an infinite
web of associations: materials that transmit
energy, animals that transmit messages, objects
that transmit images, musical instruments in a
state of potentiality, and soon. Seen together,
his works reveal a coherent formal sensibility
that combines an almost decadent elegance with
an attention for materials and objects revealed
in their own bare or raw states.
Dodge's practice straddles two distinct sensibilities: on one side, pre-Romantic and Romantic
thinking, from Friedrich Schelling to Novalis;
on the other side, the legacy of Conceptual
art, embodied especially in its most poetic
representatives (Robert Barry and Lawrence
Weiner come to mind). The two movements
seem occasionally to merge in Dodge's practice,
if we think about the important role that poiesis
plays for both of them.The creative instant, the
indeterminate level of artistry, poiesis must be
provoked or evoked by very synthetic means. If
Conceptual art removed or distanced the object
or the event to an unreachable 'elsewhere',
alluding to it solely with texts, maps, schemes
and instructions, Dodge makes the object the
emotional conductor that unfolds a narrative or
activates an image. It is surprising and compelling
to see how the allusive fragility of the stories
and the objects Dodge uses in his practice don't
lose any of their imaginative power or intensity
in a large-scale exhibition such as this one.
Luca Cerizza
intended for medical research, then passed
permanently interred below an unmarked patch
provides GPS coordinatesto the nearby
-
transforming the gallery space with an uncanny
'The Quick and the Dead' is, appropriately
enough, a death-haunted show. Taxidermy
corner) and Jason Dodge (an owl, supposedly
Steve McQueen's Running Thunder (2007), a
by a number of premature post-mortem works:
(2005), a full-size silver-plated model
What Will Become of Me
and nail clippings, which will eventually include
her cremated remains.
Wa lker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA
At the entrance to ‘The Quick and the Dead’
works brought together in a small anteroom.
It includes a 1969 text by Robert Barry from
his series ‘Leverkusen Pieces’ (‘Something that
come to consciousness’) and an On Kawara date
Douglas Huebler, and Adrian Piper among them,
Lamelas and Stephen Kaltenbach. But curator
Peter Eleey is, as he notes in the catalogue,
So the show also ranges through an
assortment of viscerally and visually engaging
work, of various periods and '-isms', including
Underlying this expansive curatorial mode
1984: accidentally mastered at half-speed, a
gallery space, another niche acts as a mirror
image coda: the corrected version of the Russell
piece, another Kawara, another Lawler, and
another Barry text from the same series (‘Some
-thing I was once conscious of, but have now
into the museum space.
At the most basic level, ‘The Quick and
about Conceptual art, but it doesn’t feel much
expansion itself. While the show's mise-enscene works primarily to create a mood, there
is also an argument being pressed: a compelling
reading of the Conceptual turn. In the
familiar art historical story, idea-based work
Duchamp - play analogous headgames in the realm
The automobile is proposed as a surprisingly
Zeit ist
keine Autobahn (Time is not a motorway, 2009)
features a tyre grinding itself unceasingly down
engine block crusted overwith bright blue copperlG. Ballard-esque aura. Paul Ramirez Jonas’
lovely video Longer Day (1997) presents the
the work in ‘TheQuick and the Dead’, it is a moving
'some end game of modernism', as Eleey writes
in the catalogue. 'The Quick and the Dead'
reconceives this retreat from form as, paradoxically,
a kind of enlargement of scope, reaching
beyond the merely physical world to travel in
an expanded realm.
Barry’s
(1968),
gorgeously eerie and unabashedly theatrical,
space with an invisible, immeasurable, but nonetheless real force. Perched between spiritualism
and physics, the device is intended to create a
literally charged atmosphere. Something similar
Anonymous II (2009).
here and now.
Steven Stern
Jason Dodge
FOUR CARAT BLACK
TOURMALINE AND
HALF CARAT RUBY
INSIDE AN OWL
During the process of
embalmment, precious
gems have been placed
inside of an owl
2007
Mixed media
5 x 18 x 13 cm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JASON DODGE
When I woke up, there was a note in my pocket explaining what had happened
EXHIBITION DATES:
OPENING:
GALLERY HOURS:
SEPTEMBER 10 – OCTOBER 24, 2009
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 6 – 8 PM
TUESDAY – SATURDAY, 10 AM – 6 PM
“There is only this world, and this world.” – Michael Dickman
Things can have a history that we can’t see. In these physical things, we exercise our imagination and forensics to understand their history.
A name of one woman is printed on paper, divided into syllables, and carried by teams of homing pigeons over hundreds of miles, her maiden
name from western Ohio to New York and her married name from Krakow to Berlin. Her name, temporarily cut into parts, each syllable connected to a pair of wings and one beating heart.
An astronomer, a meteorologist, an ornithologist, a geologist, and a civil engineer cut pockets from their trousers. In a stack, they lay in order
of the altitude imagined of each profession, from the stars through clouds and birds, mountains and bridges.
Looking at these things (a name or trouser pockets) is the starting point in discovering the work and ideas of Jason Dodge. He displays an
element before us that becomes a key to something else, enabling a connection for the viewer to envision on their own. These things are
presented much like words in a piece of writing, like when we read the word forest, we might think of trees, birds, or insects. But unlike words,
what we are presented with is actual, without metaphor – they have force and weight that can only be completed by our projection of the
humanness of these things. Ultimately, Dodge relies on the viewer to complete the work and that can be the only way for the work to exist.
The physical material in Jason Dodge’s work is often ordinary. Dodge’s interests lie in the potential narratives that are formed from what we
can project on these things. These things are ways of connecting us to people, to lives, to the natural world, and scientific phenomena. A
furnace, for example, is connected to gas, water and electricity in the basement and from this fixed point touches the people who live in the
building. Attached to the furnace is a complex network of pipes, and wires flowing water, electricity, and gas, connecting us from our homes,
and filtering outward to power generators and storage facilities, gas manes and valves, reservoirs and the Hudson River, aquifers and dams,
rainwater and oceans. From these far away places the water eventually finds its way back to us, to our bodies and to our skin. When the
furnace breaks there comes a moment of disconnect. The electricity and water cease, the gas is disconnected and cold comes throughout
the building. The removable parts are then replaced, a new furnace is installed, and ultimately the old furnace becomes fractured like lost
things.
As the title of the exhibition suggests, we are left with a note that possibly explains a series of events, but do we really know what happened?
We are faced with a broken fragmented furnace and are left to wonder where it came from and who the people were that were affected by its
removal. We read the name of a person. Who is this person, where does she live? Her location could be no more to us than an address on
an envelope or a pinprick on a map. We could know her, have walked on the same street, or shared the same air. We use our knowledge
and experiences of these things to understand them and we use our imagination to see them.
Jason Dodge, the first major monograph of Dodge’s work will accompany a survey exhibition at the Kunstverein Hannover in February, 2010
and at La Galerie in Noisy le Sec, France. He recently had a solo project at the Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Germany. Current group exhibitions
include “Plus Général En Particular,” Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France, “The Quick and the Dead,” Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
MN, and “Scorpios Garden,” at Temporäre Kunsthalle in Berlin where the artist lives and works.
For further exhibition information please contact Meaghan Kent meaghan@caseykaplangallery.com
Next Gallery Exhibition: Simon Starling, October 29 – December 19, 2009
GALLERY ARTISTS: HENNING BOHL, JEFF BURTON, NATHAN CARTER, MILES COOLIDGE, JASON DODGE, TRISHA DONNELLY, PAMELA FRASER, LIAM GILLICK, ANNIKA VON HAUSSWOLFF, CARSTEN HÖLLER, BRIAN JUNGEN, JONATHAN MONK, DIEGO PERRONE,
JULIA SCHMIDT, SIMON STARLING, GABRIEL VORMSTEIN, GARTH WEISER, JOHANNES WOHNSEIFER
REVIEWS:USA
Window Hook, Quail, 2009. Photo: Cary
Whittier. Courtesy the artist and Casey
Kaplan, New York
When I woke up, there was a note in my pocket
explaining what had happened, the full title of Jason
Dodge’s latest show at Casey Kaplan, introduces
the elliptical structure that stitches the handful of
exhibited works to their titles. For example, a stack of
cut pockets is paired with two statements attributing
their respective positions to the imagined altitudes
of
the
astronomer,
meteorologist,
ornithologist,
geologist and civil engineer to whom they supposedly
belonged. Characteristic of the artist’s recent output,
the viewer is asked to step into the roles of detective,
literary critic and spiritualist alike, reading the titles’
explanatory claims against the material evidence
on display, triangula ting players and back stories
from glancing allusions, and even weighing Dodge’s
tacit invitation to suspend disbelief, so that the small
moments he has carefully assembled in the gallery
space may adequately evoke the wonderment and
loneliness and mystery of life. If these strategies
feel rather commonplace in an era of barely- there
poetical postconceptualism, it merits reminding that
Dodge is no latecomer to the field, and while some of
his works lean so heavily upon their elisions as to risk
preciousness and sham nostalgia, he more often than
not proves an empathetic and inspired storyteller.
Jason Dodge
When I Woke Up...
An oversize cardboard box and old furnace obstruct the threshold of Casey Kaplan’s
entry gallery, where Dodge presents a deliberately cramped constellation of works, including
a quail recipe affixed to the wall by a window hook; the pockets; a tenor recorder covered by
a folded sleeping bag; and a leather glove, unbuttoned to accommodate a metal light fixture.
These juxtapositions carry a low-grade surrealist quality, their constituent parts looking too banal
to accommodate much additional psychosexual frisson - which may very well be to Dodge’s
liking. In their seeming resilience to transmogrifying into anything more sculptural than the
empirical givens, they incite a similar discomfiture as a certain famous sardine can floating on
the sea. ‘You see that can? Do you see it? Well, it doesn’t see you!’ a local fisherman noted once
to a young Jacques Lacan, though to the psychoanalyst the can did seem to stare back, its gaze
potentiating a field of visuality and identity exceeding conventional anthropocentric delineations.
Dodge has mentioned his interest in the poems of Dan Chiasson written from the point of view
of objects. His sculptural combines arrive in the gallery through a similar conceit, with the excision
of previous owners, histories and uses inducing phantasmagoric auras that only accentuate their
ontic presence.
Even a detective meets his maker. In the main gallery, a long copper pipe runs through a
square hole in the gallery wall and (allegedly) into the gallery’s main water supply. A metal lever, at
pipe’s end, issues a provocation, redoubled by an attached note that entreats the viewer to ‘build
a great aquariaum.’ The projective fatalism of the aforementioned works is here compressed into a
straightforward, causal chain, sensationalist in its restraint, awe-striking in its watery promise: a fast
idea, fading just as quickly. Tyler Coburn
Casey Kaplan, New York
10 September - 24 October
Carr, Adam. “Jason Dodge”. Spike Art Quarterly, Issue 16, 2008.
Jason Dodge
Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin 02/05—07/06/2008
Massimo De Carlo, Milan 08/05–28/06/2008
Those who are fairly familiar with the work of Jason Dodge will be accustomed to the very few pieces
he produces per year. Although this might suggest a minimal, almost scare, and more to the point, empty
output, nothing else could be far from the truth when looking at the artist’s work, which could be described as
a dense, strikingly rich oeuvre, comprised of pieces that are marvellously considered, wondrously conceptually
and beautifully executed.
Dodge’s work, in essence, directs an audience’s attention to their own impulses of thought, imbuing
the creation of personal narratives, but avoids the cliché’s that one might consider when reading this particular description. His works almost always result from a sequence of personally assigned actions, carried out by
individuals of whom had been chosen for their very particular occupations or location (a weaver, an air pilot, or
those in dispersed parts of the world during the equinox). Focusing on the role of interpretation and perception,
and placing the poetic into the foreground, they harness the ability to imaginatively engage viewers with situations, of objects that perform mutely––all a trace of an event but seemingly devoid of their subject. Pivotally, the
title of each work––and the artist’s pervasive focus on, and use of, descriptive language contained in each––
functions as a key intermediary between the objects and the viewer, thus unfolding the pieces’ meaning, history
and ultimately enabling their uniqueness.
Despite the artist’s refusal to deal in over production, two recent solo exhibitions––of which ran almost
concurrently––presented 10 new pieces, while revealing a point of departure to the approaches undertaken,
and the ideas underpinning, the aforementioned. At Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin and Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan,
the style of presentation suggested a transportation of objects from the eras of land art or art povera (a constant in his exhibitions), also notably having the titles of work printed over 3 to 4 pieces of paper, pinned to the
wall, and positioned in the same way as that of the pieces. In Lubeck, Germany Mariele Schultz wove a piece
of cloth. She was asked to chose yarn the colour of night and equalling the distance (12km) from the earth to
above the weather (2008) demonstrates Dodge’s approach perfectly, leaving us to consider the position of the
piece––and subsequently our own––in relation to the world around us. Another work, They are waiting for you
at the monument they (the brass band is) are waiting for you at the monument (2008), consisted of brass band
instruments, but unlike his previous work where we try to reverse the process of each (like a detective with
the title evidencing the objects historical trajectory), intentionally it remained unclear what the precise origins of
these objects are: are they the possessions of a previous band or one in current existence? Who are the people
waiting exactly? This piece is part of a new body that the artist describes as “diagrams”. Another comprised a
tube filled with poisoned hemlocks, versions of which were each present at both exhibitions, with the largest at
Lüttgenmeijer traversing an entire section of the gallery wall. Also present at Lüttgenmeijer were further diagrammatic works: one consisting of an electrical current running through a tuning fork to a lamp; another, combining
a gold ring and an egg of a homing pigeon; and batteries from a radio positioned on the gallery floor to point
north. With what seems to place focus on an impression or literal observation via a combination of objects,
rather than metaphor or allusion––or elevating the performance and history involved in each as seen in his older
pieces––these works add a newly compelling dimension to an already impressive oeuvre.
IF when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades, Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
151 VI
Adam Carr: Let’s start by discussing your most recent activities and work
backwards through time, in a similar frame of mind that an individual
work of yours poses to viewers. Could you tell a little about the exhibition
you recently curated at Massimo De Carlo?
Jason Dodge: The exhibition at Massimo De Carlo is about reading - the notion
that the act of reading is a creative act. Something private is made by reading and
in a sense the exhibition is juggling the idea that a willing suspension
of disbelief can go both ways. And perhaps the artist, writer or designer is also
engaged in awilling suspension of disbelief while they make what they make,
a suspended belief in themselves and their thoughts. I wanted to make an
exhibition that had as many different configurations of the spectrum of this idea
as I could think of. The show is mostly of poets and designers. And the title
of the show is a complete poem by William Carlos Williams. I like the idea
of atitle as distribution of an idea. And in this case, I wanted to use a poem so that
every time the show was mentioned one would have to print the entire poem.
V.I. 150 JASON DODGE by Adam Carr
AC: Did you include your own work, or was it more a case of exploring central aspects of your practice without actually showing any of your work?
JD: Truthfully, it was important that the exhibition did not include my own work
- I also did not want the show to be adirect lens into my own practice. However,
with that said, the show is about the possible transformative nature of experien
ing something someone else has made, or something that already exists. This
transformation is the opposite of referencing or appropriating historical artwork.
The exhibition, quite simply, is about creativity, causing something to exist, bringing
something into being, internally and externally. This idea is one of the most important things for me in making my own work, but that is hardly adeclaration, because
I think creativity is the basis for all good work.
AC: Your work seems to have a strong focus on the “activity” of the viewer,
positioning the audience in such a way that the role of a spectator becomes
intrinsic in its making, or rather, its undoing. Often, a paradox is at play
privileging the viewer while at once challenging the capabilities of their
imagination. One of your most recent pieces Rubies Inside Of An Owl (2006)
appears more direct than others, posing the question of whether the piece
lives up to the reality that the title suggests. Is the blurring of the boundaries between true and false interesting for you?
JD: No. I don’t think proof is an interesting way to look at things; it takes
away the possibility that there could be more than what you see.
AC: There is a certain faith structure, however, drawn between the viewer
and yourself - in other words, it is belief that plays a significant role in the
reading of Rubies Inside OfAn Owl within which the limits of the work are
always controlled by the limits of the viewer’s imagination.
JD: I think of it in relation to the idea of willing suspension of disbelief.
I try to approach my work in relation to writing, but by using avisual language.
V.I. 154 JASON DODGE by Adam Carr
AC: This very much exemplifies the charged atmosphere contained within
your works - a strong performative element often resulting in work
appearing to be on the brink of becoming something else. Consequently,
the viewer not only speculates over the potentialities of the piece, but
also attempts to retrace the narrative associated with it’s making. But the
works appear more than just relics of a particular sequence of actions
though - they suggest a part of a much larger narrative. A recent series
of pieces, entitled Darkness Falls, involves the participation of others in its
formulation. It is interesting that you yourself didn’t travel to these remote
and somewhat far-flung destinations, but rather, you asked others to play
a role in the construction of the work. This seems to foster an extension
of the work’s possible narrative, making it more densely layered - both
in terms of a potential retracing of the previous actions that the materials
in the work belie, as well as the projection of our thoughts into scenarios
for what could occur next. I’m curious to know more about your idea
of using the contribution of others, and whether this is something you
are currently still employing in the development of your work.
JD: To make the work Darkness Falls on Beroldingerstrasse 7, I had afriend
who was looking after her uncle’s cottage in the Black Forest. I simply asked
her to take everything in the house that makes light and left it at that.
Meanwhile she took every match, candle, illuminated clock face, LED light
from the coffee maker, everything, not the TV, though. When the owners
returned to the house a week later, they slowly realized, as the sun set,
that there was no light. First they thought the power was out, and then upon
realizing that all the lights were gone, they started looking for candles,
which they found were also not there. What they didn’t notice until
it was completely dark in the house was that there was a box filled with
all of the replacement lamps, and clocks, and candles still inside the house.
In making this work I realized something - the more I clidn’t try to control the
outcome, by giving only the basic instructions. the more alive the work becomes
for the person making it for me. And in essence they become the true primary
viewer of the work - it is a very special relationship. Currently I am making
works with aweaver in Algeria, my neighborhood chimney sweep in Berlin,
two violists, a pigeon racer and a botanist. They are all such different people,
and are all doing something new with something they know so intimately.
V.I. 158 JASON DODGE by Adam Carr
AC: It seems intimacy is something always underpinning your work acting
as aform of bait that draws in the viewer momentarily to then only
disrupt and unsettle their familiarity with such materials. I see your approach quite similar to a director, presenting astory to a larger audience,
where lies apossible collision between the real, the elusive and the fictitious...
JD: What I do is never false, what I say has taken place. There are gems inside of
the owl. the lights are from the house I say they are from. The relationship I have
to the work. and in some cases with the people involved, is a private one, and in
that sense the work is intimate. The events that take place in the making of the
work are stories that are mine, or rather, between me and the people it involves.
The work is meant to be literal. I think this is why poetry is interesting to me. I don’t
care about the notion of the poetic, just the possibility that asimplified language of
comparison and economy is something that I can relate to. While I say my work
is true, simply the notion that you have to take my word for it leaves doubt. And
intimacy in a sense could be the creation of trust and the suspension of doubt. It
could be confusing. We all know that if acharacter in anovel does something, he
actually did it. But translated into the language of an artwork, that very same act of
the character in anovel is different.
AC: Just going back to the idea of your work increasingly using participants
in its material gathering - I know that you once collaborated with the artist
Maria Nordman, although initially it didn’t intend to be aform of collaboration,
JD: Maria Nordman made awork in 1972 that I really love. She built awall
around the shaft of light that came through the loading dock door of the Newport
Harbor Art Museum. When I was asked to make an exhibition in the same space
30 years later, one of the works was to replace the wailia bel from the original
work. The title of my work was The Return. During the exhibition I got amysterious
call from Maria Nordman full of questions, She proposed that in the exhibition she
would put two music stands, one with her notebooks about the original work, and
the other for people who had seen the original work to reflect upon seeing it. I love
this idea of calling the work The Return, and then having her return!
AC: You mentioned earlier some of works that are currently in process
and I’d be interested in knowing more, particulary about the work involving
the chimney sweeper.
JD: One of the works currently being made is called Ringing Through
Chimneys. I have asked the apprentice chimney sweep in my neighborhood
in Berlin to attach asmall brass bell to the brush he uses to clean chimneys.
The bell will be there for afew months until it is time for me to take it to Paris.
AC: Your earlier work, particularly within solo exhibitions, consisted
of various objects related to one over-arching theme - often remnants
of a bourgeois lifestyle. You also did one show that took as its starting
point the winter Olympic sport, the Biathlon. Could you expand on
some of your early work? As there seems to be a departure from this
approach, I’m interested in finding out the reasons behind this deviation.
JD: Looking back, the earlier work that you are referring to is quite similar
to the recent work. The sublect was always missing, like the chimney sweep
is missing and the person that threw the silver through the window. In the older
work there was always the detritus left behind, I have always been interested
in the idea of writing that I spoke of before. In the past I was more interested
in the idea of building a character or atheme. I used the notion of decadence
for the sole purpose of creating time, I always imagined the idle rich
had tremendous amounts of time. I liked the idea of this burden of idleness
as anarrative device - after all, the work was about anxiety, not the rich.
The exhibition about the Biathlon was based on the idea that to shoot a rifle
after skiing long distances, the athletes have to learn to slow their hearts
down in a matter of seconds when they had to stop to shoot. Truthfully,
I was quite heartbroken at that time, and for a long time, and I felt that
learning the skill of slowing my heart down could help me.
The change in my work came mostly from moving to Europe, needing
to find new ways of navigating the act of making work without a studio
and living in sublets. There is a distance created by being an outsider
that I love so much. I am also older now, I am married and have a child,
I care about different things, and both my life and the way I work have
become more simple.
JASON DODGE was born In Newtown, Penilsylvailla, USA, In 1969 Lives ald
works In New York and Berlin. In 2006 won the Ars Viva awards, and his work
has been shown in several museums as KW Institute of the Arts, Berlin, and
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
ADAM CARR IS an Independent curator and writer based In Pails and London
V.I. 165 JASON DODGE by Adam Carr
Hopelessness Doesn’t Come In Silver
Ronald Jones
Success has always been the greatest liar. ‘Great men’ as they are
venerated become subsiquent pieces of wretched minor fiction.
FREDERICK NIETZSHE
Ronald Jones, “Hopelessness Doesn’t come in Silver,” Jason Dodge, Editions Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2007, p. 22 - 27
W
In mid-retreat between Potsdam and
Paris, his relationsh ip to Frederick
the Great of Prussia soured, Voltaire
received unexpected news from his
friend and champion Mme. Pompadour, Louis XV’s influential mistress: he was no longer
welcome in France. That Mme. Pompadour mistakenly
overdrew the king’s feelings towards Voltaire matters little
now. As it was, the latter collected himself, chose Geneva
for his exile, took an estate, renamed it us Delices and
moved in with his lover Mme. Denis Banishment became
an indulgence in domestic bliss and entertaining; as Voltaire
described it, a life of “affable manners, simple living, and
the culture of the mind.” Without a trace of over-stuffed
Parisian society, he furnished and decorated Les Délices in
assiduous elegance. “We have finally come to enjoy luxury
only in taste and convenience,” he wrote in Le Siécle de
Louis XIV. And when he became melancholic at never
having become a father, he legally adopted a teen-­age girl
and began to take pleasure in family life at Les Délices. The
writer and philosopher also devoted considerable energy
to perfecting the grounds surrounding his villa, planting
4,000 trees, beneath whose boughs sprawled untold gardens,
Hower beds and neat gravel paths, all tended by two master
gardeners. His kitchen garden was sumptuous by today’s
standards, boasting basil, tarragon, strawberries, rosemary,
thyme, mint, sage and a dozen other herbs and spices surrounded by green trellises that he had a hand in designing.
After just five months at Les Délices, he wrote to his friend
Nicolas-­Claude Thieriot after just. five months at Les
Délices: “I do not know anything to compare with my situation. I did not know this new pleasure, nor that of sowing,
planting and building. I would like to have you in this little
corner of the earth, where I am very happy.” And indeed,
as soon as the last touches to the villa and grounds were
made, Voltaire’s celebrity and reputation for hospitality drew
luminaries from across Europe to his “little corner of the
earth” at Les Délices. As Voltaire wrote to a friend in Paris,
“The best society, of wise and enlightened people, come here
almost every day.”
“When the Courts of Europe shut their doors,
Voltaire embraced exile as his own Horatian ideal of an
uncorrupted life, while simultaneously stepping back onto
the world’s stage to advocate civil liberties and human rights
in the face of Christian cruelty on a standard to which we
may still aspire 250 years later. While in residence at Les
Délices, he completed L’Historie du Doctoeur Akakia et du Natif
de Saint-Malo (1753), La Pucelle (1755) Le Siécle de Louis VIV
(1751), Essai sur L’Histoire Générale et sur les Moeurs et L’Espirit
des Nations (1756) Candide (1759), Traite sur la Tolerance (1763),
Traite sure la Tolerance (1763) and Dictionnaire Philosophique
(1764) From his paradise in exile, Voltaire took revenge, vandalizing European culture using these seminal works as precious stones hurled through the windows of those sacrosanct
institutions Court and Catholic Church. His motivation is
best expressed by his own notorious motto: écrasez l’infâme..
It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
VOLTAIRE
The focal point of YOU ALWAYS MOVE IN
REVERSE, Jason Dodge’s spare and beautifully-­designed
installation, could have been inspired by Voltaire’s life and
accomplishments at Les Délices. A shattered plate-­glass
window at the museum has been given a provisional repair
23
using sticky brown box tape, the standard urban operating
procedure for mending a store window smashed in during the
course of nocturnal mischief by a thief or the tomfoolery of
some drunken delinquents. This breach of a ward of culture
is cast as a crime scene, acknowledged by the temporary
fix-­it, but otherwise undisturbed. Flakes of plate-­glass lie
spewed across the floor, and two meters from the fractured
window rests the blunt instrument used to carry off the raid:
a one-kilo Credit Suisse bar of silver bumon, nunber 137198.
The ingot is genuine and hefty enough to have done the job.
YOU ALWAYS MOVE IN REVERSE comes off with
theatrical pacing: first, a series of short declarative sentences
-­ the silver bar, the glass shards, the mended window -­ then,
an evaporation into prolonged silence.. Silence on the stage
is as important as spoken dialogue, and it is equally weighted
in Jason’s work. His tempo, leading to a hushed crescendo,
inevitably leaves you wondcring about what’s not being scen.
When the brisk visual rhythm drops off, it is as if the installation
pulls back to allow you to slare through the broken window.
Mapping a trajectory backwards from where the silver
bar landed, you can estimate the direction from which it must
have come. Normally, visitors to exhibitions narrow their
focus to what’s inside; that is, after all, the point, but in the
case of YOU ALWAYS MOVE REVERSE, things move in
reverse. Your concentration insidc the museun is released,
and the mystery is all out there; who could be behind this?
And what drove him to sneer in such an audacious way, with
only arrogance (hopelessness doesn’t come in silver) on his
side?
Breaking windows with rocks or Molotov cocktails
is a bit of rough trade, by now a signature expression of
contempt or even revolt. But hurling scorn with silver bullion
registers something effete or self-­indulgent, over-­refined and
snobbish or even sterile. How can such a decadent gesture
uphold passion or fanaticism, senselessness or outrage? One
answer is that Jason has altered the idea of revolt at something
like a genetic level, turning the throwing of an ingot in
rage into an astonishingly enlightened gesture. This was the
act of a gentleman revolutionary hurling his silver towards
humankind’s institutions, his contempt for civilization rivaled
only by his respect for what civilization could become. In
serene confidence, the silver bar seems to echo with Voltaire’s
voice: “Écrasez l’infiime,” and do it with what matters.
Paradise is where I am.
VOLTAIRE
Voltaire wrote the celebrated satire Candide from his villa
outside Geneva, Les Délices; it became one of the most
precious ingots ever aimed at the establishment. The book
was a response to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, tsunami
and fire, which, within six minutes, left a third of Lisbon’s
population dead and 85 percent of its buildings -­ palaces,
libraries and every cathedral - in ruins. The catastrophe
occurred on a Catholic holiday in the capital of a devout
Catholic country, leaving theologians and philosophers
with little justification for so arbitrary a demonstration of
God’s wrath. The destruction thus initiated a rundamental
transrormation of European culture and philosophy, including
a revision of the meaning of evil that we still recognize
as commonplacc ill our own time. Even 200 years later, the
scope or the reform demanded by the disaster resonated with
philosopher Theodor Adorno, who comment.ed in Negative
Dialectics (1966) that “the earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to
cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz.” Lisbon gave
Voltaire the traction and the incentive to lash out against
Leibniz, who had famously reasoned that while not everyuling in the world was good, ours was nonetheless the best of
all possible worlds because God had created this one rather
than its lesser version. Leibniz reconciled his belief in a good
and loving God with his awareness of the great evils of the
world based on the optimistic assumption that our suffering
has some greater purposc, at least in the eyes of God. But to
Voltaire’s mind, survival in Lisbon was totally arbitrary, not
the result of divine will intervening. This belief inspired the
satiric teeth he gave Candide to saw away at “the best of all
possible worlds.”
This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the
perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we
must conceal it.
VOLTAIRE, Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764)
The violent reproach of YOU ALWAYS MOVE IN REVERSE is exceptional in .Jason’s oeuvre; on the whole,
his work is reliably placid. He is capable
of Monty-Python-like
scenarios, but his
sceneography is bcst
when he understates
it. In an art world
longing to reward the
vividly juicy, Jason has
made a virtue of being
polished and dernure.
In his choice of subject
matter, he is uninscribed
to arching themes and
allergic to verbatim exposition.
Kenneth Tynan, the
heart and soul of London’s
National Theatre, could
have been thinking of Jason
when he wrote: “Art is a
private thing, the artist makes
it for himself; a comprehensible
work is the product of a
journalist. We need works that
are strong, straight, precise, and
forever beyond understanding.”
Jason’s approach is discriminating,
but undeniably flirtatious; you can
usually feel his art sweeping over
you, gently breathing down your
neck. And in the face of work so
unaccountably stong and intuitive,
you are lucky just to give in.
Jason is anything but
anachronistic, though I rarely think
of him in relation to his contemporaries; little is gained, I
find, on either side of the comparison. This is indeed rare
when the history of art isn’t the greatesl, or even a germane
filter to distill the substance of contemporary art. In Jason’s
case, it is the history of theater, literature and language that
has been his greatest ally in locating his place within the
creative disciplines. As improbable as it may seem, I have
begun thinking or Jason as a distant heir to Voltaire’s taste
for a life of “affable manners, simple living, and the culture
24-25
of the mind,” but you would have to know him to know why.
Artistically, Jason shares with Voltaire an astonishing gift for
pairing idiosyncratic expression with hardboiled parody, and
he is especially masterful when employing irony, hyperbole,
understatement and especially flawed logic in an intuitive
fashion. like Voltaire, Jason is consummate with theatrics,
but his gift is for underplayed pageants staged with the
bravura accoutrement peculiar to late modern lives consumed
by exclusivity, privilege, wealth and, most enviable of all,
eccentricity. One of his accomplishments is that he never
forces conflict-­ say, between inequity and righteousness -­ in
his work. Rather, with the subtly of a sensitive stage director,
he coaxes satire out of each mise en scéne, but never spares us
the attendant cruelties.
Extra City, Antwerpen 2006
We cannot wish for that we know not.
VOLTAIRE
The University of Coimbra had pronounced that
the sight of a few people ceremoniously burned alive in a
slow fire was an infallible prescription for preventing earthquakes. So when a 1755 earthquake subsided after destroying
three quarters of Lisbon, the authorities of that country
could find no Sllrer means of avoiding total ruin than by
giving the people a magllificent auto-­da-­fé.
In a cruel twist of fate, Candide and his tutor
Pangloss survived the earthquake but were subsequently
arrested, Candide flogged and Pangloss hanged. Afterwards, “The terrified Candide stood weltering in blood
and trembling in fear and confusion. ‘If this is the best of
all possible worlds,’ he said to himself, ‘what can the rest
be like?’”
If Voltaire was convinced of the absurdity of theodicy, Jason Dodge is convinced of the hypocrisy of vindicating the museum’s utopian ideal -­ or, for that matter, any
ideal-­ simply for having called an end to elitism, racism
and commercialism. Jason has retreated from that fool’s
errand and like Voltaire, chosen his own exile from where
to hurl his precious stones.
“Let us work without theorizing,” said Martin; “’tis the only way to make life
endurable.”
VOLTAIRE, Candide (1759)
YOU ALWAYS MOVE IN REVERSE
lkg silver bullion thrown through a window into an exhibition space; the silver and glass are left as they land,
and the window is repaired with tape. 2004
26-27
My Home
has Directions
and a Weight
Catrin Lorch
NORTH
A gilded lightning rod for a tower pointing north. 2006
Catlin Lorch, “My Home Has Directions and a Weight,” Jason Dodge, Editions Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2007, p. 14 - 18
N
I have never met him, but I am to write a short
text on Jason Dodge for a catalogue and would
like to see more of his works. “My studio, that’s
our apartment,” the artist tells me on the phone.
When I arrive at the little house at the back of a
Berlin courtyard, I am greeted and promptly measured in the hall.
I do not like being put up
next to a measuring stick. For
me, centimeters are evidence:
they give others an image of
me that I do not readily share.
(the year Jason was born, 1968,
has a special meaning in Frankfurt,
where I was born; it is the
numbers that mean something).
I leave behind a little pencil mark
on the wall; with the sun shining
on it, it looks like a tiny hair lost
by my shadow. The text grows over
several weeks. Among the reasons it
takes so long is that Jason has much
to tell, and I want to wrap his sparse
and fragile works into favorite passages
of his. No art history, just German
Romanticism. Romanticism is less
emotional than it sounds, having more to
do with idealism and distance than sentimental
feeling. There are Romantic stories
in which approaching and distancing
can be bent both convexly and concavely.
Like an image in a distorting mirror, what is
desired appears unattainably close or almost
tangibly shifted out of reach. Jason is in Denmark
when I call him. During the equinox,
he will marry Christine at the most northern
point of her homeland. The longest day of the
year is a little longer there than in Berlin or the
Siebengebirge, where I live.
I write the words in English and send
them to him as an email so that he can look them
over. Jason promised me that no one would ever
be given these pages to read, especially not the
roughly translated quotations of E.T.A. Hoffman.
Jason Dodge, according to my thesis, is some kind
of a reverse Sandman: he disembowels apparatuses,
takes them apart, puts them back together, spreading
out machinery like in a diagram, but much more
knotty There is always a warp or twist to it, a deliberate
disorder that keeps the parts from ever finding their
way back together again. Jason Dodge is a dissector, I
allege, and in that, he is equally as ingenious as Drosselmeyer,
who makes nutcrackers parade, or the puppet
maker Spalanzani, who sands delusions into spectacles as
if they had been prescribed.
Jason is completely honest. He says that in the
USA, few generally know about all this dark Romanticism.
They are not aware of the Sandman figure, not even as it
appears in Freud, especially not because of Freud. I do not
doubt him; Jason has read every book I bring up in conversation.
When he travels, he usually has no camera with him.
Christine has it; he has a book of poetry instead. I complained
that I had found a song and immediately lost it again. In 1962,
the Afro-English singer Cab Kaye gave the astronaut John Glenn
a few lines from “Everything Is Go” to take with him when
he went up into space: “The rocket is ready to roar/Glenn is in
his place/get set/start off/this smile is heading to space.” I
subtitled a friend’s painting with that refrain because I had
no other words at hand, and now those words have been used
and are gone. Jason has more of them. He just read a similar
such text, a poem by William Carlos Williams written when
the Soviet Union sent up Sputnik in 1957. That was exactly
fifty years ago today, as I finish this catalogue essay, and one
year after the birth of Jason’s daughter Cecil. I call Jason,
and he has the poem with him. “Did you know that William
Carlos Williams’ birthday is September 17th, just like mine?”
I ask. “And he delivered Robert Smithson into this world,” he
answers.
In the preface to the book of poetry, I discover a
quotation about walking and running, characteristic motifs
in Williams’ work. It seems to echo a workshop in Antwerp I
recently attended, a tribute to the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark.
Workshop speakers Suely Rolnik and Hubert Godard how
ever didn’t say much about art. Instead, they talked about our
image of the human body and how it is both reflected and
blurred by the media, even wholly contorted. This eventually
led to a discussion of Heinrich von Kleist’s “On the Marionette Theater” and the bear that no one could hit with a
dagger because it steadily watched all the fumbling and awkward
maneuvering that preceded the throws and could thus
recognize a carefully aimed drive, parrying it with his paw.
The bear’s is a countenance of awareness that comes from
the spine, Godard explained. There were many dancers at the
workshop waiting for the practical part of Godard’s speech.
It never came. They asked how they were supposed to put his
words into practice. Godard answered that there is not much
to do but raise your focus, look at the space and see yourself
in space. “outside - outside myself - there is a world,” wrote
William Carlos Williams. “And since then, the world is no
longer around me, but I am in it,” I tell Jason. But Jason has
already arrived there long ago, has measured the weather
(with a few kilometers of yarn - knotted together or added
up - reaching to the clouds). He has multiplied the innumerable
facets of a diamond (he taped it to a mirror) and
has thrown a solar eclipse like a ball into the wrong part of
the calendar - because it is all about keeping the storyline
taut, even cutting it off if necessary. As a child, he cut all of
the Christmas lights at a mall; the stores went dead, and the
season was nothing without its luminous rigging. When Jason
breaks something, he destroys it thoroughly. But it does not
hurt. Sometimes it gives one the feeling of being snowed into
a dead-end street and wanting to be exposed to its unexpected
stillness a little longer.
An interruption: there are networks of pathways
consisting of duty and responsibility, of work and commitment.
One can describe biographies, date books and family
trees as routes, but one cannot live in a sociogram instead of a
chronicle. We are held down by gravity to the earth and move
in cardinal directions. It has been said that Gerhard Richter
especially loves his third wife because of her accent. They are
both from Dresden, but he has lived and worked as a professor
in western Germany for a long time, and it was not until
the wall fell that he began hearing young women speaking
with a Saxon accent in the Rhineland.
Dresden. For me it is a place under a bridge. My
boyfriend left me in order to live with a man. I waited for his
call for five days. My sister advised me “throwaway the cell
phone; then the waiting will stop”. “Toss it into the river”,
she said, the Elbe perhaps. I calmed down eventually, but the
synagogue behind me was still closed, the museum not yet
open. A gray-white poster announced the coming exhibition:
15-16
paintings by Gerhard Richter. Dresden was only 300 meters
long, and all of its doors are closed.
When Christine was not sure whether to be with
Jason, he traveled alone to Japan, where a long-planned stay
awaited him. Japan was a dismal street that one strolled along
alone in the afternoon. A cafe owner took pity on Jason and
put his photo album down next to the tea - unsolicited, every
day. His family had traveled throughout Europe, America,
Asia. There were thousands of photos, all showing the same
five people lined up in front of mountains and buildings,
bridges and churches.
Japan is not Dresden, but Jason has an expression
for the impressions we leave in the world, the dents we inflict
on it whether we measure or travel, suffer or read. And 1 am
so fond of listening to his accent. When Jason put a group
show together, he titled it with a William Carlos Williams
poem. Whoever mentions the exhibition must recite
If 1 when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-­white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,if 1 in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
1 was born to be lonely,
1 am best so!”
If 1 admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,Who shall say 1 am not
the happy genius of my household?
The man’s limbs dance in the rise and fall of the seven vowels
of “household genius.” He’s in the north room. He has a wife
and baby. My home has directions and a weight ever since 1
have come to know Jason.
THE INESCAPABLE WEIGHT OF REFLECTIONS
A two-carat diamond attached to a wall of mirrors
with transparent tape 2005
18
EDITH H. ILMANEN
A name E-dith-H.-Il-ma-nen divided into syllables was carried
by a team of homing pigeons from Berlin to Paris.
E
Various items measured; attached end to end,
their length would reach the troposphere. A
gold-plated lightning rod pointing north. A
deserted badminton court; at the edge, a room
where someone's clothes strewn about imply
a rendezvous. Not ices in front of a museum announce that
Dr. Franz Josef Lubken , a meteorological physicist, has seen
the night-glowing clouds of the Arctic and Antarctic circles.
A collection of light sources ranging from light bulbs to
matches that once illuminated a holiday home in Poland. A
bell that has rung in the chimneys of the Kreuzberg district
of Berlin.
The works of Jason
Dodge reference events that lie
in the past or at an unreachable
distance, events that occurred
in discrete privacy or were so
transient that they could not be
captured. And yet they are precisely
described by the objects left
behind after their completion and
by Dodge's clearly-formulated
titles. Dodge's installations give
rise to a feeling of longing; when
viewing them, one must always
consider what they lack. In no
time at all, the viewer's thoughts
will lead to a distant place - a
sunrise in Helsinki, for example,
or Kerkenstraat in Merkelbeek or
a Polish holiday home. As relics ,
the objects of his installations
seem to yearn for the completion
that only the viewer can
accomplish in his own thoughts.
In This Way
Everything
In The Distance
Becomes Poetry
Friederike Schonhuth
RINGI NG IN CHIMNEYS
A bell attached to the brush of chimney sweep Jorg Hauseler during
the spring chimney cleaning in a neighborhood in Berlin. 2007
But since the places, people and events required for that
completion must ultimately remain foreign to the viewer, his
very participation also remains an unfulfilled wish.
In an interview, the artist admits that literature
is an important stimulus for his work . But rather than
specific novels or poems, it is the act of writing itself -­ the
application of ink to paper - that sparks certain ideas. In a
similar process, the objects in Jason Dodge's works present
themselves to the viewer as words of a story. Yet the story is
never linear; it opens up different spaces of association for
different people. The objects function as finely thought-­out
stimuli that trigger the imagination as if through electricity and convert it to a state of desire. Due to the often exotic
objects and circumstances of the works, the viewer’s desire to
have witnessed the story alluded to, once aroused, results in a
strong longing for the unlived life that each of our decisions
brings wit it. Who hasn’t at one point imagined something
as unusual as traveling to hte North or South Pole, reaching
the place where the weather is made, or having a message
delivered by homing pigeon? Who wouldn’t like the film of
8
life to be played backwards just once, like Jason Dodge does
when he throws a bar of silver through a window back into
an exhibition space instead of stealing it?
These are often fantasies from childhood, wishes
and dreams that every one has pictured and later forgotten.
Not Jason Dodge. Even if he sets off on actual journeys as in
frequently as we do, he seems to have been to all the places
where we, when looking at his work, would also like to have
been. Rather than give up wishing, Dodge has turned it in to
his art. For him, unfulfilled longing has become a romantic
mission, the impulses of which he follows time and time
again.
"In this way everything in the distance becomes
poetry - poem. Actio in Distans. Distant mountains, distant
people, distant events, etc ., everything becomes romantic,
quod idem est." This fragment of Novalis, whose Blue
Flower became the symbol of
longing for an entire epoch, all
but nestles up to the work of
the contemporary artist. Like
Novalis, Dodge maintains a broken
relationship with the rationalized
world and expands its horizon
through emotionalized fabrications.
He can thus be understood
as standing in the tradition of
Fichte's concept of longing, in
which it is the "desire for the
completely unknown" that lends
the creative power to connect the
inner world to the outer world,
that provides the epistemological
possibility to establish contact with
one's surroundings.
It is not only the central
motif of longing that characterizes
Dodge's work as romantic,
but also its narrative for m. For
Friedrich Schlegel , "the history
of modern poetry is a perpetual
commentary on this philosophical axiom: all art must
become science, all science, art; poetry and philosophy must
unite." Precisely in this sense, Jason Dodge links scientific
phenomena such as the solstice or the solar eelipse to human
events, thus making them tangible and intensifying them
as points of longing. He strips his objects of their rationality
and provides them with sensorial traces of human action,
thereby arousing the viewer's thirst for adventure and the
exploratory spirit. Like Kristin Larson or Lorie Karnath, he,
too, would like to have traveled to the North or South Pole
or been with the Berlin chimney sweep Jiirgen Hauseler
when he attached a small bell to the tool he worked with,
filling all of his chimneys with sound.
Those objects presented as “remains” and pieces
of evidece are always subject ot eh careful aesthetic selection of the artist, who with each storey he tells, simultaneously creates an aural artwork. This connection of concept
to tactility establishes the poetic field of tension between the
structural demands of narrative and the aesthetic possibility
of the perfect artwork in which Dodge’s orks are always
situated.
And even if, in past years, the type of installations
he creates have changed from stage-like settings to presentations of discrete, separate objects, longing remains a key to
our understanding of them. In this context, the title of a
YOUR DESCRI PTION OF AN IMPOSSIBLE SCENARIO OF HOW WE
COULD BE TOGETHER IS WHAT MADE ME LOVE YOU AND BROKE
BOTH OF OUR HEARTS
Badminton court. 1999
work from 1999 can almost be read as a motto: "Your description
of an impossible scenario of how we could be together is
what made me love you and broke both our hearts." Only the
state of unfulfilled longing amounts to happiness.
In Dodge's latest works, a single object often suffices
to evoke a particular story. Even if these works at first
appear rudimentary - less complete than the earlier works
- they are in fact, a second look makes clear, much more
complex: the viewer is no longer asked to put himself in the
position of another person's relationship, but is now himself
placed at the center of a narrative and thus challenged to
establish links with other, parallel stories in the exhibition.
What always remains uncertain is how plausible
these stories really are. Dodge says he is not interested in
proof because it limits rather than expands the possibilities
of viewing. And just as he is disinterested in truth, so too is
longing itself, for constant wishing is fearful of being fulfilled
and thus allows us to indulge in our eternally sweet ache•
JASON DODGE
PROJECT
Street: behind the cliché
Jason Dodge, Darkness Falls on Beroldingerstrasse 7, 79224 Umkirch, 2006
All of the light bulbs, candles, matches and anything that makes light is taken
from a house in a forest in Germany
Courtesy of Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York
Darkness Falls on Beroldingerstrasse 7,79224 Umkirch 2006
Jason Dodge’s installations, sculptures and photographs are the result
of situations that he creates in connection with everyday life and his
personal experience. The objects that he displays often function as
traces of earlier actions, in the exhibition space or elsewhere, and
instil a paradoxical feeling of presence and absence:
For Darkness Falls on Beroldingerstrasse 7, 79224 Umkirch, Jason
Dodge asked a friend to remove all the objects that emit light including
bulbs, candles, matches, etc. from a house located at the
edge ef the Black Forest in Germany, The objects are leesely laid out
on the floor of the gallery, formally evoking art movements such as
Land Art or Arte Povera. The work allows us to create our own stories,
especially when we consider that it involves a house plunged into
darkness and located close to a forest, a situation favourable for
intrigues and mysterious stories.
Biography Jason Dodge (Newton, United States, 1969)
Lives and works in New York Ciey and Berlin
Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art
Jason Dodge
Installationsansicht von / Installation view of ars viva 05/06: Identitiät/ldentity
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 25.06. - 20.08.2006
Photo: Uwe Walter
ars viva 05/06 - Identitä/ldentity Exhibition of the award winners of the Cultural Committee of
German Business within the BDI e.V.
Jason Dodge, Takehito Koganezawa, Michaela Meise, Robin Rhode
June 25 - August 20,2006, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 1st and 2nd Floor
In spring 2005 Jason Dodge, Takehito Koganezawa, Michaela Meise and Robin Rhode were awarded the ars
viva 05/06 prize for art, dealing with the question of “Identity”. After exhibitions in Rostock and Antwerp, KW
Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin shows works by the four artists that have partly been conceptualized for
this show.
During the past few years all four artists have moved their life and work to Berlin; the show in their new
hometown will focus on the impact that Berlin and its artistic and social contexts have on the creative process.
How are personal experiences mixed up with conditions one comes across in the new environment and what
impact does the city’s specific historical situation have on the artistic work? The exhibition highlights works
addressing issues related to cultural and Social background, exploring how to define an identity suspended
between the Here and the Elsewhere.
Jason Dodge (born 1969 in Newtown, USA)
Jason Dodge’s installations often reference other, far-away places, people or events. Some few clues - a title,
some scattered objects - is all he needs to evoke an image of distant places and people.
At the centre of Jason Dodge’s work for KW is a cage housing five homing pigeons. The pigeons originally
belonged to the late Joh de Vries, a pigeon breeder who trained them to find their way back to his horne in
Merkelbeek from distances of up to two thousand kilometres. After Joh de Vries died, his house and loft were
sold. The pigeons were given to a friend. Since homing pigeons can only be trained to home once in their lives,
the birds would still, if let out of their cage, find their way back to Merkelbeek, to exact the same location where
their home once was.
Dodge’s works invariably focus the absent. A small label on the wall, for instance, announces the occasional
presence among the gallery viewers of a woman who has participated in expeditions to the North and South
Pole. However, since she never lifts her incognito, viewers might be standing next to her at any time without ever
knowing. In Dodges works tiny clues open up references to remote locations and give them a presence in the
exhibition on a par with the thin scattering of exhibits.
APRIL 2006
New York
CRITICS’ PICKS
Jason Dodge
CASEY KAPLAN
525 West 21st Street
April 21 - May 20
For all that modern amenities such as telephones and airplanes mitigate the difficulties of
maintaining long-distance relationships, the miles that separate us from our loved ones
can still feel bitterly vast. Leaning on little more than a few rich details and the viewer’s
imagination, Jason Dodge’s latest work deals with this very topic and conjures a
Chekhovian sense of drama and narrative besides. “Into Black” (all works 2006), a series
of eight monochromatic grayscale photographs, turns out to be the results of
“undeveloped photo paper that was exposed for the first time at sunrise on the vernal
equinox” in such far-flung locations as Kenya and Greenland. Darkness Falls on
Beroldingerstrasse 7, 79224 Umkirch is made up of lightbulbs, candles, and other lighting
implements, all loosely arranged in a circle on the floor, which were removed from a
house in the Black Forest. Apparently even the refrigerator lamp was taken, and, as with
the photographs, the weird story imbues the piece with emotion and intrigue, stirring the
imagination. But not every work depends upon background information to prompt a
romantic reverie. Bird is a simple device requiring that the viewer rotate a key (one side
of which is embellished with the words AUDUBON BIRD CALL) that spins a wheel
whose spokes are made of the fingers from a woman’s leather glove. Another glove, this
one intact, is placed so that the fingers flick it as the wheel turns. The resulting fluttering
sound resembles that of a startled bird taking flight, and this sensation acts a connective
thread between the works, triggering memories of sudden departures and fantasies of
unlikely returns.
—Claire Barliant
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JASON DODGE:
Opening:
EXHIBITION DATES:
GALLERY HOURS:
FRIDAY, APRIL 21 ST, 6-8 PM
APRIL 21 - MAY 20, 2006
TUESDAY - SATURDAY 10 - 6 PM
Franz Kafka once wrote that one could think about people who were far away and touch those who
were near, but anything else is beyond human ability. To him, writing letters meant laying himself bare to
his ghosts because humanity fights for peace in its souls through trains, cars, and planes. “But that
doesn’t help,” Kafka said, “the other side is so much stronger and more peaceful--mail ... telegraph ...
telephone. “
The light for “Into Black” is captured at the sunrise of the vernal equinox. For this piece, the artist placed
eight friends between the world’s meridians. They each held a shield made of photo paper against the
disc of the sun while the rectangle cast a brief shadow above their heads - taking in the light in China,
Africa, Greenland, Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, Minnesota, and Monaco. Like lightning rods evenly
distributed on a roof, “Into Black” connects eight different places to the sky.
Another friend of Jason’s was sent into the Black Forest, where she collected all the light bulbs,
matches, and candles at Beroldingerstrasse 7 in Umkirch. Nothing was to be forgotten-- not flourescent
bulbs, illuminated switches, nor the refrigerator light-- until darkness reigned in the house. What she
found and took has traveled to New York in a package, and is lying spread out on the gallery floor like
the entrails of a unique mechanical system. “Darkness falls on Beroldingerstrasse 7, 79224 Umkirch”
gives eternal night an address. The large house is now a lifeless hull, it appears not only dark, but dead,
where time stands still like a cuckoo clock that has stopped ticking.
When Vladimir Nabokov tried to de-witch Franz Kafka’s spell, he gave a long lecture on Gregor Samsa
the protagonist of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Nabokov, a well-versed entomologist, came to the
conclusion that the unfortunate fellow who lay there paralyzed in his insect shell could have flown if he
had only known that he could. Because The Metamorphosis never suggests that there is the possibility
of flight, we do not necessarily have to believe Nabokov’s interpretation. The good news about flying will
not reach those to whom it is addressed or, more precisely, to either of the two people involved. And
we, the readers, will not give up the story.
-Catrin Lorch
FOR FURTHER EXHIBITION INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT THE GALLERY.
NEXT GALLERY EXHIBITION: JEFF BURTON MAY 26 - JUNE 24,2006
JEFF BURTON, NATHAN CARTER, MILES COOLIDGE, JASON DODGE, TRISHA DONNELLY, PAMELA FRASER, ANNA
GASKELL, LIAM GILLICK, ANNIKA VON HAUSSWOLFF, CARSTEN HOLLER, BRIAN JUNGEN, JONATHAN MONK, DIEGO
PERRONE, JULIA SCHMIDT, SIMON STARLING, GABRIEL VORMSTEIN, JOHANNES WOHNSEIFER
JASON DODGE INTERVIEWED BY KRISTEN CHAMBERS
Kristen Chambers: At its core your work really seems to be about
how we know-how we know truths, how we know what is real, how we
gather and process information. I was thinking about phenomenology,
or experiential knowledge, versus a more Kantian notion of truth
being an abstract, ultimately unattainabe notion. On the one hand,
the viewer sees what is in front of her, and that is a certain kind of
truth, but, on the other hand, what she perceives may not really
exist. Do you see your work as putting a premium on knowledge as a
construct of experience or as something abstract and unattainable?
Jason Dodge: I think that for me there has to be a tension between
the two. How a viewer reads the work is completely dependent on
how that person approaches something unfamiliar. With the piece
LLOYD ANDERSON HAS BEEN TO THE SOUTH POLE (2005), for
example, someone who has been to the South Pole will have a totally
different relationship to the work than someone who has never
been, or met someone who has been, to the South Pole. l There is
a character in one of Don DeLillo’s books who realizes that he has
never been to Greenland and has never known anyone who has been
to Greenland. He begins to wonder whether or not it actually exists. I
like the idea that the potential reading of the work can shift based on
what somebody’s personal experience has been and what knowledge
or information they have held onto. There is always this aspect of
uncertainty that forces you to figure out what something is, or
means, and to question whether “this” is an accurate representation
of “that.”
KC: I know that BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND
(2005) was inspired by a work from the history of the Orange
County Museum of Art created by Maria Nordman. How did you come
to know about the Nordman piece, and what was it that interested
you about it?
JD: I really liked the balance between
something precise and something
ephemeral and a poetic description of
how our primary source of illumination
is 100 percent predictable. We
already know what the sun will do
tomorrow.
KC: When you are conceiving a project,
and the works suggest a larger story,
how much of that narrative have you
built for yourself?
JD: Almost none of it, because I am
interested not so much in making a narrative that is pieced together
from A to B to C to D but, rather, in the potential of it being pieced
together using whatever framework someone would bring to it.
Imagine that somebody is working on the water line under the street
and that there is a pipe that comes out of the sidewalk with a spigot
attached. One person may walk up the street and know, “That is
how they are testing the water lines,” and someone else might walk
up and think, “Why the fuck is there a spigot coming out of the
sidewalk?” The person who has no idea what it is might be more likely
to come up with some really farfetched story to help make sense
of it. I think we have all had the experience of finding something we
consider totally exceptional and mentioning it to someone else, who
finds it completely ordinary.
KC: Are you influenced at all by film, literature, or other forms of na
rative?
JD: One of the early and most important influences for me was the
structure that Nabokov uses in his stories. Especially something like
PALE FIRE, where you have the introduction that is about the analysis
of the epic poem and then you read the epic poem and then you read
the analysis of the epic poem where the guy starts to think that it’s
about him, and they are all written by the same person. There is this
idea of the untrustworthy narrator: the story evolves, and then you
realize that the person telling the story is completely dubious, and
then you have to go back and reevaluate all the information that
you already read. I really love this idea. In a way it is an attempt
at a nonlinear narrative structure,
although a book is linearyou go
from the beginning to the endbut you are constantly forcing
the reader to evaluate what it was
that they read before.
KC: Oftentimes your objects-your
“signifiers,” so to speak-don’t
really signify anything, yet in your
older work there is this whole
aspect of the simulacrum. You
created objects-expedition artifacts, hotel accoutrements, biathlon
props-that were “hyperreal.” These objects were used to signify not
only a thing but also a place, a time, and an aesthetic. It seems as
if the more recent work relies less on objects, and as a result the
referent or narrative is more elusive or enigmatic.
JD: I have always been interested in the idea of a literary narrative,
the way that a writer goes about constructing characters in a story.
I have also been interested in the idea that design fundamentally has
to relate to form. It does not have the choice that art does of being
absent or nonvisual. In many of those early works I was interested
in using different design iconographies as a way of constructing a
historical narrative that visually references a very precise period of
history.
I found that viewers’ perceptions of these works were so
fundamentally different. One person would be moved by the work
because they related to the experience of it, while others found it
difficult to accept the idea of this decadent lifestyle as something
that would represent anyone’s emotional reality, because there is
a kind of distance there. For me my work has never been about
luxury, but perhaps about the complex problem of empathy in
relation to privilege-mental illness, substance abuse, unrequited love
are all a sort of stylization of human behavior and in the lives of the
bourgeoisie these emotional features can take on a sort of extreme,
look at Tennessee Williams, GREY GARDENS, SUNSET BOULEVARD, or
most of the genre of melodrama. In my earlier work I was trying to
position myself as the outsider, the narrator, and I am not sure if it
really worked.
KC: Many of your works reference exotic locales or connections
amongvarious parts of the world. I wonder if this comes from a
peripatetic lifestyle and a desire to really be a citizen of the world.
JD: I went to Africa for about six months when I was twenty, and
before leaving, I had a fully formed
vision of what this experience was
going to be. The reality was such
confusion because, on the one hand,
I wanted to satisfy this narrative
that I had made up in my head, but
on the other hand, I also wanted to
have an experience based on what
was actually happening. For me,
this became truthful experience—a
compromise between all these
different facets of your imagination.
The reason I wanted to make THE
DISAPPEARANCE OF WICKERFINN
LUTZ (2005) is that, while the
envelope travels through the hands
of the postal system, Wickerfinn lutz
exists until someone determines that
he doesn’t and sends it back.2 In this
brief moment in which one person
takes a letter with the intention
of delivering it to somebody and
discovers that the person does not
exist-there is a moment of reality.
The envelope, marked by the postal
service, almost becomes a portrait
of that moment and that place. If
the letter is processed in a country
that has a different alphabet, that
is going to be reflected in what is
written on it before it is returned to
me. I really like that idea because it
starts to stimulate and also deflate certain anticipations and expect
tions about what these places are. I am also literally interested in
distances. I did an exhibition in 2000 that referenced the biathlon
that included a work that measured out the distance between the
shooter and the target in string with flags. Another group of works,
called WHY ARE YOU AFRAID OF DISTANCES? (20024), has to do
with the displacement that comes from living abroad and trying to
come to terms with my connection with home and with my family
and friends. I wanted to make things that would try to replace
distance: a microphone to record the sound of somebody who isn’t
there, a mobile that is really a spool that winds a piece of thread that
could stretch across the ocean. There is also a piece called ABOVE
THE WEATHER (2005). It consists of pieces of string, ribbon, wire,
and other things that come measured in an exact length, which if
tied together would equal the distance from the earth to above the
weather, above the troposphere. You see a pile of things on the
floor and are told that their combined lengths would reach above the
weather. You fundamentally have to connect it in your head, to do
something that there would be no conceivable way to do in reality.
KC: What really strikes me about POSSIBILITY OF ROSE COLORED
LIGHT is that same impossibility. The only chance of realiiing the
rose-colored light is in one’s mind. Can you talk more about that
dichotomy?
JD: It is like THE SECRET GARDEN-if you can picture it and in your
mind make rose color light that experience completely belongs to
you, you then own the rose-colored light, in precisely your color
with precisely your vision. Some people see that piece as being cruel
because there actually is no possibility of rose-colored light. It is
also interesting to choose to be on the outside, the doubting of the
dreamer is a common literary theme. Think of how many children’s
stories revolve around the child’s expanding imaginary universe and
the parents’ lack of understanding.
In BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND there is only a
single element to declare the state of the sun’s rising and setting
somewhere far away. It is simply meant to be a kind of telepllthic
empathy, a vehicle to imagine somewhere else. We use the same
sun.
KC: This kind of work is very fascinating to me because, one the one
hand, it does privilege the viewer, however, on the other hand, the
work is often very difficult for the viewer; to “read” or engage with.
JD: There has to be room for multiple perspectives. I think that
looking at something is a creative act. There are plenty of places
in the world to find prescribed meaning; my work is just not one of
them.
Irene Hoffman & Laurence Gateau, eds., Jason Dodge. Newport Beach, CA & Nice, France: Orange County Museum of Art & Villa Arson, 2005. p. 49-53.
From: Irene Hoffman & Laurence Gateau, eds., Jason Dodge. Newport Beach, Ca & Nice, France:
Orange County Museum of Art & Villa Arson, 2005, pp. 7 - 13
WAITING FOR THE SUN TO SET IN GREENLAND
On February 26, 1973, at 11:30 a.m., artist Maria Nordman created
a work at the Newport Harbor Art Museum in Newport Beach, California.
This work, titled NEGATIVE LIGHT EXTENSIONS; OR, THERE ARE NO
OCEAN STREETS,’ was a built room that opened up to the museum’s back
alley through the loading dock door. This room was determined by the sun’s
position at the exact moment of the opening of the show at 11:30 a.m. Using
the earth’s rotation and the movement of sunlight through the door, Nordman’s
work created an unexpected and transformative perceptual and social
experience accessible to museum visitors who walked out of the building and
to those who happened down the alley during the duration of this work. As a
“timespecific” work, as the artist calls it, NEGATIVE LIGHT EXTENSIONS
produces an environment in which the observer’s experience is part of the
artwork. Preparatory drawings and a few photographs of the installation (which
Nordman has stamped “FRAGMENT”) remain as documents of this virtually
unrecordable work. Now, more than three decades later, Nordman’s work has
inspired another examination of sunlight and experience in Newport Beach.
This new work, an installation by Jason Dodge, serves as the centerpiece of his
exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art, the successor to the Newport
Harbor Art Museum.
In conceiving his show for the Orange County Museum of Art, Dodge
came across a reference to Nordman’s NEGATIVE LIGHT EXTENSIONS
as he looked back at the museum’s early exhibition history. The process of
researching this artwork and attempting to locate the few existing details
about it was initially frustrating but became increasingly intriguing as each
new piece of information and documentation revealed further uncertainties.
Not only did Dodge find inspiration in the perceptual disruptions created by
NEGATIVE LIGHT EXTENSIONS, but in Nordman herself he also found a
compelling conceptual ally, an artist who shared his interest in creating works
that develop meaning in the experience and imagination of the viewer.
Dodge’s BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND
(2005) delivers an ever-changing experience of light and perception while
also revealing his talent as a storyteller and choreographer of objects. With
rows of hanging fluorescent lights, BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE
IN GREENLAND evokes the patterns of daylight on the western coast of
Greenland. As is typical of Dodge’s works, we are given very few pieces
of information-an enigmatic title that suggests a measure of time and light,
reference to a distant location that we’ve heard of yet have probably never
seen, and rows of lights hanging in a gallery that are either on or off depending
on the time of day. Meticulously composed details, these elements are just
enough to suggest the setting for a larger yet elusive story line, ultimately
leading to a narrative of our own invention.
BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND
references the disorienting period of the year in Greenland when the sun rarely
sets. With fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling and wired to a timer,
Dodge’s light grid turned on only at the time of sunset in Greenland, presumably
the moment when its residents turned on their own lights. Since this work was
installed during summer and early fall, at the beginning of the exhibition the
light grid was turned off for much of each day, corresponding to some of the
longest periods of daylight in Greenland. As the run of the exhibition extended
into the fall, Greenland moved into longer periods of nightfall, resulting in
longer periods of light in the gallery. With an ever-changing schedule of light
and dark periods in the gallery, this work would be different depending on
when a visitor experienced it. At times visitors would see a dark room, at
other times they would see a fully lit room, and then there would be those
potentially startling moments when a visitor would be standing in the gallery
at the moment of sunrise or sunset in Greenland, causing the lights in the
gallery to turn off or on accordingly. In both dark and light conditions, an
homage to Nordman’s NEGATIVE LIGHT EXTENSIONS is visible in the
room. With a work titled THE RETURN (2005), Dodge acknow edges the
conceptual and theoretical lineage of his own experiential light installation by
presenting the original label for Nordman’s installation on the wall in large
vinyl text.
The remote geographical references of BETWEEN SUNSET AND
SUNRISE IN GREENLAND are further developed in an altered world map
hanging near Dodge’s light grid. This companion work of the same name
visually connects the western coast of Greenland and the western coast of the
United States in a curious geographic “switch.” While at first glance Dodge’s
intervention is har~ly discernible, further examination of the map reveals
a careful and subtle alteration that underscores the dramatically differing
topographies of these regions. By aligning the vastly different regions of
Greenland and Orange County~with their dissimilar populations, climates,
and lifestyles—BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND’s
light grid and altered world map propose reflection on the small details of
parallel lives, lived half a world away.
While BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND
produced an experience impacted by the presence of functioning lights, in a
companion exhibition of Dodge’s works held at Villa Arson in Nice, France,
the presence of light is only suggested, and its effect on the gallery is only
hypothetical. In the multiroom exhibition spaces of Villa Arson, Dodge
installed POSSIBILITY OF ROSE COLORED LIGHT (2004), a work
featuring seventy empty fluorescent light fixtures hung from the ceiling in
precise rows. The light tubes for these fixtures could be found in different
corners of the galleries, some leaning against the walls in groups, others laying
on the floor, still in the manufacturer’s boxes. Each tube has been covered
in a sleeve of dark pink cellophane. Should these tubes be installed in the
fixtures, we presume, the room would be cast in a pleasing rose-colored light,
the kind of light, as the idiom goes, that can create a deceptively positive
view of the world. Unlike the standard commercially produced fixtures used in
BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND, these fixtures were
carefully fabricated from brass and powder-coated steel. Closer inspection
of the fixtures, however, reveals that they are not connected to any source
of electricity and, in fact, are not even functional but are seductive stand-ins
for the real thing. Installed at the time of the 2004 presidential campaign and
election in the United States, POSSIBILITY OF ROSE COLORED LIGHT
was Dodge’s seemingly hopeful reflection on the potential for a better outlook
on life. And yet, with the light tubes on the floor and simulated fixtures hanging
above, it would seem that the possibility for rose-colored light in these rooms
is quite remote and can exist only in our imaginations.
These two recent light installations certainly owe much of their
conceptual roots to the ephemeral and experiential work of artists such as
Maria Nordman, yet with rooms articulated by fluorescent tubes and light
fixtures, formally these works are also descendants of Dan Flavin’s bold
fluorescent light tube installations. Although Dodge’s works acknowledge the
Minimalist icon, they do so while infusing Flavin’s commercially produced
materials and straightforward simplicity with enigmatic narrative content,
fragments of irony, and elements of fiction and artifice. BETWEEN SUNSET
AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND and POSSIBILITY OF ROSE COLORED
LIGHT reveal Dodge’s expert manipulation of objects and spaces, in which
every detail is considered and the viewer’s imagination is privileged. Each of
these large-scale installations is experienced as part of a larger grouping of
works that introduce small narrative details such as a character, a condition, an
incident,or a location.
As in many of his previous exhibitions, Dodge’s Orange County
Museum of Art and Villa Arson installations each reference distant and even
remote corners of the world, places that we know exist yet probably have
never seen. In addition to the western coast of Greenland, other evocative
locations include the war-torn country of Sierra Leone and the Gothic city
of Antwerp, each suggesting exotic plots and reflection on places and events
outside our everyday experience.
A work entitled THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WICKERFINN
LUTZ invites the possibility for endless story lines played out in many corners
of the globe. The postal system and mailroom clerks in cities all over the
world were unwitting collaborators in the creation of this work. The piece
began when Dodge mailed out nearly one hundred envelopes addressed to
a man named Wickerfinn Lutz. Although the address on each envelope is
real (they were sent to consulates or embassy offices in dozens of countries),
the intended recipient is not. A number of the mailed letters therefore were
eventually rerouted and returned to the sender. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF
WICKERFINN LUTZ is about a search of sorts. This work exists as much in
our imaginations-as we envision the vain attempts to locate the elusive Mr.
Lutz that took place at each address-as it does in the physical documentation
of the search embodied in the returned, undeliverable letters, each one bearing
the traces of its futile global journey.
While it is understood (through its label) that THE
DISAPPEARANCE OF WICKERFINN LUTZ is part fact and part fiction,
other works are more ambiguous. With COMPLETE SOLAR ECLIPSE
SIERRA LEONE. OCTOBER 10, 1982 (2004), the boundaries between the
real and the unreal are indeterminable. This work features the handwritten
itineraries of seventeen people who seem to have traveled to Freetown, Sierra
Leone, in 1982 to view a solar eclipse. The journeys of these seventeen intrepid
travelers originated in such cities as Paris, Geneva, Minsk, Perth, Liverpool,
and New York. Their travel plans are written on fax paper, pieces of mail,
pages of calendars, and personal stationery. As their itineraries reveal, many
of them traveled more than twenty-four hours to reach Freetown, with several
travelers passing through Lagos, Nigeria, to catch their final connection. One
assumes that Sierra Leone was the location that would have provided the
optimum or most dramatic view of the October 10 solar eclipse; after all, a
grueling pilgrimage to a country plagued by civil war and the dangers of a
treacherous diamond trade would not have been without its risks.
A potentially dangerous destination, exotic international itineraries,
and a celestial experience shared by converging strangers lend rich narrative
possibilities to this work, and yet this collection of othe wise banal travel
documents begs the question: what exactly are we looking at? Are these in fact
the carefully saved notes of global travelers who made a journey to the same
distant destination more than twenty years ago? And, if so, how did Dodge
possibly assemble them? These uncertainties lead to questions.not only about
the work’s “authenticity” but also, more importantly, about Dodge’s position
in this piece. Was the artist the collector of these itineraries, seeking them out
through unknown means for their ultimate inclusion in this work? Or, in the
more likely scenario, was he the maker of these itineraries, a skillful forger
of handwriting and manipulator of materials? Both possibilities seem equally
absorbing. As in many of Dodge’s works, his position relative to this work
remains wonderfully unresolved. Ultimately we are left considering whether,
if these itineraries were in fact “faked,” as logic might dictate, the very event
necessitating these supposed travels was even real.
A similar line of questioning is elicited by the materials and
implied actions in YOU ALWAYS MOVE IN REVERSE (2004) and THE
INESCAPABLE WEIGHT OF REFLECTIONS (2005). A one-kilo silver
bar issued by Credit Suisse lying on the floor of a gallery at Villa Arson is
the surprising antagonist in YOU ALWAYS MOVE IN REVERSE. Shards
of glass on the floor and a nearby broken window, haphazardly repaired
with brown packaging tape, suggested how the suspicious bar might have
gotten there. A two-carat diamond taped to a mirrored wall in a gallery at
the Orange County Museum of Art becomes the curious focal point of THE
INESCAPABLE WEIGHT OF REFLECTIONS. A small piece of paper on the
floor provides the details of its purchase months earlier in Antwerp’s diamond
market. Captivating objects, a bar of silver bullion and a round-cut diamond
become alluring agents of intrigue, catalysts in interrupted narratives that
seem yet to be fully played out. As these works articulate, what is absent in
Dodge’s works often carries as much weight as what he has so carefully made
present.
Evidence of a curious act of vandalism and a mysterious foreign
shopping trip, these engaging tableaux combine the fictive and the real, bearing
enigmatic traces of human presence and past events. Questions and intriguing
incongruities dominate our reading of these works. In YOU ALWAYS MOVE
IN REVERSE, a window has been broken and provisionally repaired, yet
evidence of its destruction still remains on the gallery floor. Who are we to
believe carried out this prank, and what was the intent? This strange tableau
and its enigmatic title both direct our imagination to the circumstances and
events that led up to this scene. With a mirror, a diamond, and some tape,
THE INESCAPABLE WEIGHT OF REFLECTIONS sets up an arrangement
that elicits any number of questions about where the diamond came from,
its authenticity, and the story behind its purchase. The mirrored surface and
clear tape highlight the diamond’s form on the wall while underscoring the
peculiarity of its very presence and its seemingly haphazard placement. With
three very different materials that each function very differently in the world,
THE INESCAPABLE WEIGHT OF REFLECTIONS presents an evocative
merging of incongruous materials and economies.
Ambiguities continue to surface in ABOVE THE WEATHER
(2005). Spools of wire, string, cable, clothesline, and other materials that are
measured in lengths lie in a colorful pile on the floor of the gallery. As Dodge’s
label proposes, if each of these lengths were to be tied together, it would equal
thirteen kilometers, the height of the troposphere, an elev tion “above the
weather.” The potential yet improbable task inherent in this accumulation
underscores Dodge’s interest in manipulating logic and his delight in leading
the imagination toward the impossible or the unexpected. Perhaps these
triggers to the imagination are the magic of Dodge’s work. Like Maria
Nordman’s installation photos stamped FRA MENT or the sun’s faint halo
during a solar eclipse, Dodge’s works give us only parts of a larger picture.
The conclusions to the narratives activated by his compelling scenarios are
ours to devise and are bounded only by the limits of our imaginations.
IRENE HOFMANN
UN-BUILT CITIES
09.12.2003 - 08.02.2004
im Bonner Kunstverein
Jason Dodge
Dear Annelie.
Please excuse the unevenness of my correspondences -- speaking
of cities I have been in many lately. New York, Los angeles and
Philadelphia over the past six weeks in America. the weeks before
that I moved frrom Antwerp to Berlin and went to Copenhagen to
visit my wife’s family -Lest week I flew fron New York to Frankfurt to install my contribution to “Adorno” at the Kunstverein and yesterday i arrived in
Berlin figuring out how to qet my things out of storage and into my
new apartment -- it has been” wonderful, but a bit hectic.
As for the pages I sent to you for the catalog -- First, the text
on the top of the pages are the names of international companies
and dates that correspond to each company and a specific points
in their development. As for the images, they are images of four
pieces that are part of an idea I have been developing lately.
they bave to do with dispersing things from one location to many,
both literally and figuratively. They are multiples that are one
piece, they are meant to be installed in many locations simultaneously,
like mirrors, parallel lives or films that have a multinational release -- I love the idea of many people experiencing
similar things in many different places at the same time, and in
particular, things that most often go unnoticed.
What draws me to the narrative of cities is the repetition in some
common elements » building lobbies, trash, ideas of satety, public
sculptures, drugs, music, the presence of international business
and banks, historical celebrations, and diversity of social
class« these pieces that I describe as dispersion pieces are
meant to resemble such scenarios » a standing ashtray, a plastic
bag, a microphone hanging in Many rooms of a house or a public
space, a shattered piece of black glass, and a public sculpture
are all things that depend on context to be given meaning (perhaps
this is true of all things), a plastic bag, although possibly
interesting on it’s own becomes more interesting in relation
to the context in which it is seen. In the case of “un-built cities”,
I have chosen to show “a darker army” (printed plastic bags)
I have no idea what the space looks like, and I have no idea how
the other art in the exhibition will look, although I am familiar
with many of the artists, I know that the work I will contribute
will be effected by the entire exhibition (perhaps this is true of
all things) -- When I come to Bonn to install I will decide if it
is best to have 2 bags or many, (I asked my gallery to ship several
thousand) actually on second thought it may be best to only
install 2 and to have the people guarding the exhibition encourage
viewers to steal the bags, and then like magic they could reappear.
I hope this letter finds you well. Best wishes, Jason
32
P
A
R
K
E
T
T
Gallagher
McCarthy
Sala
73
WHERE IS
WICKERFINN
LUTZ?
ANGELA ROSENBURG
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WICKERFINN LUTZ (2004),
by Jason Dodge, takes a disarmingly simple a proach. The
artist sent letters to Wickerfinn Lutz, a person of his own inve
tion, to a number of addresses in various coun tries. Since
this person does not exist, neither there nor here, many letters were returned to the artist and their contents remain a
mystery. However, for as long as there is a mailman out there
looking for such a person, he may exist after all, even if only
in the mailman’s imagination. And what about the letters that
were not returned to the sender? Did they actually reach an
addressee of the same name or did they get lost in a game that
was doomed from the start? And when will the story end, what
is the ultimate goal?
For the presentation of this piece at Villa Arson in Nice,
Dodge made a tableau of selected letters that had been returned to their sender. The envelopes show traces of the journeys they have been through, illustrating the distance between
sender and fictive addressee, which corresponds, in turn, to
the real distance between the artist and the fictive viewer.
The futility of corresponding with an imaginary person in a
venture that undergoes varying degrees of concreteness recalls
the adven tures of Don Quixote de la Mancha. In Cervantes’
satire on the romances of his time, the hero, blinded by the
very literature the writer parodies, believes that he is engaging
in extraordinary adventures with dark powers in his dealings
ANGELA ROSENBURG is an art historian and a freelance
curator. She lives in Berlin.
11
with the mundane paraphernalia
of everyday life, such as windmills,
to name the most famous example.
The “Knight of the Sad Face,” as Don Quixote calls himself,
lives entirely in a fiction of his own making, in a parallel literary world of heroic epics and amorous adventures, a world
that has now sunk into almost complete oblivion. But Don
Quixote succumbs to that world heart and soul; he is prepared
to suffer all for the sake of honoring his great love Dulcinea,
whom he has never seen face to face-­for she, too, is of his own
invention.
The seemingly haphazard search for Wickerfinn Lutz proves
to symbolize the search for a protagonist per se, but this protagonist is no longer a fiction of the viewer’s imagination. He
exists, if at all, in the imagination of an emissary, an agent of
both artist and viewer, namely, the mailman. The artist keeps
receiving letters from all corners of the world, from China, Israel, U.S.A., France ... The possibilities are legion; every country is open to the escapee protagonist and, as an escapee, he is
related to-­although entirely different from-­figures, like Anders
Contrave, that crop up in Dodge’s earlier work.
How concrete can parallel universes be? The visual fragments that Dodge lays out in exhibition spaces, where they
are loosely interrelated, yield scenarios of a casual, and yet
disturbing, artificiality. We are familiar with the objects of use
that communicate the presence of human beings and offer
clues to a narrative. Dodge’s double exhibition, “Anders Contrave: Part I” (Basel, 1999) and “Anders Contrave: Part 2, Your
description of an impossible scenario of how we could be together is what made me love you and broke both our hearts”
(Stockholm, 1999), is based on ideas that can not be read as
linear developments but as accumulations. Dilapidated, aloof
tagonist. Polish and emotions mingle; we enter a moral
maelstrom. The air is filled with inconsequentials, everything is accidental, as if casually cast about. Can a
story even exist within an object? Or conversely, aren’t
the traces of a story attached to things? And don’t plots
develop by the way in which things relate to each other)
The levels of these stories overlap and mutually determine each other. Within the glamorous framework of
invented labels, Dodge plays out his precise sense of
design on the semantic level of language in stories that
he stages, with great devotion to detail, using exquisitely faked found objects. All of the familiar items of
daily life (including bed linens)every important aspect
of these narratives is constructed, from monogram to
furniture. Dodge invests his world with life and logic,
all his invented details walking the fine line between
reality and satire. His objects are aesthetically charged
items of use that mirror cultural contexts. Under the
surface, notions of value come to play: aesthetic values with moral implications are pitted against status
symbols, flaunting top-­of-­the-­line materials and manufacturing excellence. Juxtaposed with a contrasting scenario of cheap, flimsy disposables, the protagonists reside in a social limbo of conspicuously exclusive luxury.
The viewers have come too late and They don’t belong
there anyway. As uninvited guests, all they can do is
rummage through the remains looking for the ruins of
the moment.
The charming distraction of these works is buoyed
by the emotional state of their absent actors and invites
viewers to attempt a “forensic” reconstruction as Nancy Spector remarks in her catalogue essay on the exhibition, “Anders Contrave: Part 2.” But now the viewer
has to endure definitions. The stage has become a dictionary, an encyclopedia, to which Dodge plans to add
new components with every successive exhibition. Fictional logic is just as good as any other. The use of dialogue makes especially conspicuous the poten tial and
the friction that mark the relationship between supposedly objective connotation and subjective associations.
Direct se sual experience, subjective perception, and
the reality of social intercourse and aesthetic discourse
provide the wherewithal for an exciting exchange,
JASON DODGE, “ANDERS CONTRAVE: PART 2,” 1999
exhibition view, Moderna Museet Projekt, Stockholm /
Ausstellungsansicht.
PHOTOS: ANNA KLEBERG / CASEY KAPLAN GALLERY, NEW YORK
tableaus exert a fascination, allowing viewers to take
up the thread of the story and elaborate on it wherever
they please. The portrait of Anders Contrave is hanging on an abandoned, semi-­trashed Basel trade fair
stand. The tennis clothes of a mysterious woman with
the monogram SQ lie scattered about in the old rectory of the Moderna Museet, which has been converted
into an exclusive tennis court. The exclusive ambiance,
in which elements of luxury living and corporate design blend into a referential fabric of style and culture,
does not provide the backdrop but rather a situation in
which all of the details can be read as indexical signs:
a narrative arranged and produced only for the sake
of the viewer.
Taking a conceptual approach, these props speak
of consumption, of products and their design. But as
an ensemble, they speak of passion and unrequited
love, hence conveying the image of an enigmatic pro-
12
COMPLETE SOLAR ECUPSE SIERRA LEONE
1982 (2004) lists the traveling day of fictional, but
unnamed, people who set out from different places
to watch the eclipse of the sun that took place in Sierra Leone in 1982.This natural event, which occurs
with no ulterior motive, is the point of departure for
a collective experience.. against the background of a
particularly horrific civil war, which made the African
country extremely unsafe at the time. The arduous
journey to this exotic and dangerous place in order to
witness a natural event indicates that the ignorant enthusiasts were only interested in the shared experien.ce,
in a natural spectacle that lies beyond moral categories,
beyond cruelty, brutality, and murder. But the eclipse is
not entirely without dangers of its own: if you look at
it directly, your eyesight will be permanently damaged.
The eclipse can therefore be seen only through a filter,
a blackened pane of glass, or a special film. In this exotic and especial context, the question arises as to where
the artist’s invention actually begins and where it ends,
if it ends at all-­and does it necessarily have to end in the
reality in which we happen to be? Couldn’t the artist
have equipped his invented viewers with abilities that
comparable to the conflict between Don Quixote,
blinded by literature, and the unfortunate Sancho Pansa, who tries in vain to communicate his reality.
In this respect, Dodge’s works can be interpreted
as reflections on the negotiability of art and reality. By
activating the imagination, he generates a simultaneous existence somewhere else in the world and invites
viewers to unite incompatibles inasmuch as every narrative rests on one essential prerequisite: the purposeful
waiver of possible doubts.
How convincing does an object have to be, how
authentic does it have to look, to make us believe in
the mock up-­andjoin Don Quixote in chasing after
windmills? For the exhibition “Formalismus. Moderne
Kunst, heute” (2004) at the Hamburger Kunstverein,
Jason Dodge created an installation cryptically entitled
12. OCT. 1982. It consisted of a number of brass ash
tray objects placed around the ven ue (memories of sixties corporate design), as if he had simply lifted and
recycled elements from Donald Judd’s stack sculptures.
Obviously they could not be used as ashtrays despite
their provocatively convenient placement.
The installation POSSIBILITY OF ROSE COLORED LIGHT (2004) in the Villa Arson, Nice, consists ofseventy brass lamps for fluorescent lighting evenly distributed on the ceiling of the gallery, in addition
to the regular lighting. The lamps look perfectly functional although they are not wired. Two stacks of neon
tubes are propped against the wall next to cardboard
boxes; they are wrapped in pink film, ready to bathe
the gallery in “rose colored light.” But only the viewer’s
inner eye can peer through the proverbial rose-­colored
glasses; it takes individual effort,to imagine this white
room suffused with a pink glow. One senses a certain
melancholy and possibly even resignation, which might
be interpreted as sarcastic, given a political reading
of the work. The exhibition opened on November 1,
2004, the day that George W. Bush was reelected, and
a time when the United States viewed France as the
spearhead of “old Europe,” as the representative of a
decadent system attempting to obstruct irrepressible
progress. The potential of rose colored illumination
might then be read as a pun, an ironic critique ofoversimplification and repressive black-­and-­white thinking.
JASON DODGE, YOU ALWAYS MOVE IN REVERSE, 2004,
1 kilo silver bullion, window, Villa Arson, Nice, France.
13
would allow them to gaze directly at the sun? Or
could his fiction have quietly coped with a country
crippled by civil war? Dodge’s piece is a puzzle, a
convoluted, impenetrable allegory of art and society.
PERPETUAL LIGHT (BETWEEN SUNSET
AND SUNRISE IN GREENLAND) (2005) might
be seen as a counterpoint to these two works; it establishes an exchange between sunlight and artificial
light in two different geographical locations. Standard
commercial neon lights have been mounted in rows
at the Orange County Museum as if in an ordinary
factory. When the sun sets in Nuuk, Greenland, the
lights come on in the Orange County Museum, and
they go out again at sunrise. Since Nuuk is so close
to the Arctic circle, the light changes dramatically
in the course of the exhibition so that viewers who
see the exhibition at different times will have entirely
different memories of it. The work can therefore be
extended into an imaginary dialogue between two
visitors who saw the piece at different times.
The idea of different worlds and their parallel existence resembles the attempt to understand things that
go beyond logical explanation. Regardless of where
we happen to be at the moment, somewhere else in
the world masses of people are jumping out of
bed and hurrying off to work while, somewhere else,
the lights are going out. In the installation YOU
ALWAYS MOVE IN REVERSE (2004), a one-­kilogram bar of silver is lying on the floor in a pool of
splintered glass; the broken pane through which it
was thrown is still in its frame. Dodge has reversed
the concept of theft, in general, and art theft, in particular: instead of violently removing something of
value, he has added something in an act of inverted
vandalism. That could almost be a viable definition
of art. But who would do something like that? It was
probably Wickerfinn Lutz, and the artist is trying to
give the bar of silver back to him. But that’s only
conjecture; I wasn’t there.
(Translation: Catherine Schelbert)
14
November 6 - 13, 2003
Issue 423
Jason Dodge, “Mercury Vapor
Lamp & a Month of Sundays”
Casey Kaplan, through Sat 8
(see Chelsea)
A
n instance of “inevitable monotonous repetition”: That is the offi
cial explanation for the inclusion
of “a Month of Sundays” in the title of
Jason Dodge’s new show. (Note to dealers: Don’t leave yourselves open to easy
derision by including phrases in your
press release whose hyperseriousness
borders on the absurd.)
Lovers of contemporary art have all
experienced the repetition to which this
gallery statement refers-first in the guise
of Minimalism, and then Postminimalism. Dodge colors his reiterative enterprise (a combination send-up of and
homage to both movements) in the wan
browns, blues and off-whites of 1970s
polyester leisure suits and modular furniture. A facsimile of a late-1960s Braun
radio sets the tone of a nascent high-tech
culture, the object’s literal emptiness a
nod to the vacuity of the era that gave
rise to Minimalism and its offshoots.
More than anything else, Dodge’s I
works resemble three-dimensional verI
sions of the margin drawings of a dis,
affected design student in a required art
history course. DonaldJudd’s preciI sion
box sculptures become ashtrays I and
umbrella stands; metal poles seemingly
wedged between floor and ceiling recall
the sublime tension of Fred Sandback’s
yarn, here rendered in an atrophied state.
A Dan Flavin tribute, however, lays bare
the queasy relationship between Dodge
and his forefathers with such visual and
verbal acuity that one can only tip one’s
hat in appreciation. On the floor lies a
box containing two fluorescent tubes, a
pair of sun goggles and a printed message
that reads “Complete Solar Eclipse Siera
[sic] Leone 1992,” cloaking the show’s
oedipal complex in a brilliantly sardonic
metaphor of blindness. Humor-intended
or not-saves the day.-Noah Chasin
Jason Dodge, “Mercury Vapor Lamp
& a Month of Sundays,” installation
view, 2003
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JASON DODGE:
“MERCURY VAPOR LAMP & A MONTH OF SUNDAYS
EXHIBITION DATES:
OPENING:
GALLERY HOURS:
OCTOBER 10 - NOVEMBER 8, 2003
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10TH, 6 - 8 PM
TUESDAY - SATURDAY 10 - 6 PM
Casey Kaplan is pleased to present the fourth one-person exhibition of the artist Jason Dodge. Over the past year, Dodge has
been exploring issues of construction, transition, design and the latent melancholia of cities with his contribution titled “Banko
Popular de Carakas” to the exhibition “Nation,” Frankfurt Kunstverein; and in one-person exhibitions both entitled “Milton
Keynes New City” in Berlin and Milan.
Dodge in known for installations that embrace specific moments in the history of modern design and architecture that are then
reconfigured as narrative devices. In the past, Dodge’s projects have visited various fictions that have involved an ornithologist
travelling to Finland; a fictional palace hotel in France; and the winter Olympic sporting event, Biathlon. This exhibition is in part
a response to the time Dodge recently spent living in Antwerp. Antwerp is a gothic city of diamond trading, harbour exploits,
Albanian drug mafias, and fashion. The name of the city alone has a sinister undertone as it derives from a legend of a severed
hand thrown into the harbour, thus the name translates from Flemish; hand (hand) -werpen (to throw).
For his exhibition, Dodge will present a body of new sculptures with references as disparate as international style building lobbies, minimalist sculpture, paranormal disappearances, and the recording of ghost voices. The title of the exhibition “Mercury
Vapor Lamp & a Month of Sundays” refers to a type of lamp installed in public spaces such as club bathrooms, parking lots
and dark corners in order to prevent heroin users from seeing their veins. A month of Sundays describes inevitable monotonous
repetition.
As in earlier projects such as “Helsinki,” 1998, Dodge references Deiter Rams, the creative director of “braun” from 1961-1997.
The influence of Rams re-appears in a new sculpture entitled “electronics.” This piece derives from the dual inspiration of Rams’
design for a kit radio and from the simple radio receiver used by Raymond Cass, an Englishman involved in EVP (Electronic
Voice Phenomena) a method of receiving and recording ghost voices.
The recognition of a particular element from this project could be that it evokes a time period, an attitude, or a mood. Each
element dislocated from its original context, can generate many meanings. Dodge continues to explore context, utilizing the
variable that takes place between recontextualization of a specific object or design and the temperament of the viewer who
ultimately determines what it means to them.
Jason Dodge is currently participating in the group exhibition” 160 Meisterzeichnungen,” Oldenburger Kunstverein, Oldenburg,
Germany. Later this year, the artist will partake in the exhibitions “Adorno,” Frankfurt Kunstverein, Frankfurt and “Unbuilt Cities,”
Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany. Dodge will begin residency at Villa Arson, Nice in January 2004. The work of the artist is
currently in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington
D.C., and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden.
FOR FURTHER EXHIBITION INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT THE GALLERY AT:
TEL. 212 645 7335 FAX. 212 645 7835 E-MAIL. info@caseykaplangallery.com
NEXT EXHIBITION: JONATHAN MONK NOVEMBER 14 - DECEMBER 20, 2003
AMY ADLER, JEFF BURTON, NATHAN CARTER, MILES COOLIDGE, JASON DODGE, TRISHA DONNELLY, CEAL FLOYER, PAMELA FRASER,
ANNA GASKELL, LIAM GILLICK, ANNIKA VON HAUSSWOLFF, CARSTEN HOLLER, JONATHAN MONK, DIEGO PERRONE, SIMON STARLING,
ANNIKA STROM
Jason Dodge
c/o - Atle Gerhardsen, Berlin
Jason Dodge’s recent solo exhibition
demonstrated again that he is a clever
imitator, an expert illusionist with the
sharp eye and deft hands common to
conjurors. If he wanted to make a forgery of a Duchamp ready-made he could,
although he prefers to make his own
sculptural inquiries into the quotidian
and the phantasmagorical. Strung out
from one side of the gallery to the other
and carefully plugged in at both ends,
Microphone 2 and 3 (all works 2002) is
an elegant web of simulated dire tional
microphones which insinuate
that everything that takes place
beneath them could be on public
record. It’s uncomfortable to look at an
artwork that expects a verbal reaction
while someone could be listening in on
the other end of the wire. The fact that
on closer scrutiny the mikes are just
good dummies made of, among other
things, alloy thimbles, puts a smile
on your face. Nearby a room-dividing
screen of cord and white tape, String
Wall, and a large black Mobile, part
chocolate grinder and part Alexander
Calder, evoke the spirit and style of a
public venue where good citizens might
congregate and where the spot-lit presence of things that vaguely resemble
High Modern international art are
intended to convey an impression of
worldliness.
The unifying idea of Dodge’s exhibition
‘Milton Keynes New City’ was to turn the
gallery into a generic regional cultural
centre in no particular place some time
after the 1970s. The real Milton Keynes
- incidentally the backdrop to Cliff
Richard’s music video Wired for Sound
(19B1) is the largest of a number of
Britain’s designated ‘new towns’ with its
own ‘master plan’; a development with
a grid of streets and a shopping centre
heart. It wasn’t so much based on a
Jason Dodge’s plain but curious objects
and installatoins flirt with combinations
ofthe familiar and the uncanny.
Jason Dodge
“Milton Keynes
New City’
2002
Installation View
92 frieze
radical utopian vision -like Le Corbusier’s 50-year-old vertical village La Cite
Radieuse, Marseille - as a pragmatic,
horizontal and well-meant solution
to overwhelming public housing lists.
Exhibitions, like planned communities,
generally aim to be well laid out, clean
and orderly. Dodge’s Broken Window, a
piece of wilful vandalism
patched up with orange tape, ruined the
view of the river as a reminder that one
licing environments a bit of smartarsed
random action is rarely out of place.
Dodge’s plain but curious objects and
of the familiar and uncanny. Robbed or
stripped of origin, function and purpose,
his assortments of replicas are reduced
in a gesture of subtle irony to the sum
total of their material qualities, their
styling, a summation of details and the
interplay of surfaces and textures. But
his project doesn’t stop with post-Pop
commodity critique or arguments about
style versus function and the attendant
value judgements. His works also delve
tucked around a corner was Vodka and
Grass (Fluxus Picnic), which consists
of plastic lawn clippings sandwiched
between transparent plastic sheets on
which could be found a Buenos Aires
peace dove, Moscow Olympic coasters,
empty glasses and an almost empty
bottle of vodka beneath another pile of
mikes. The question ‘Who could have
done this and why?’ lingers, while the
work resists any clear-cut narrative or
the possibility of an answer.
It’s as if Dodge sits on a fence and
looks across on one side to the surplus
produced by the world of commerce
and on the other to a similar surplus
produced within the niche market based
on the exchange of intangibles and constantly renegotiated values called art.
His work suggests that over time both
these surpluses sediment in the same
way and same place in the collective
mind. A series of postersized black and
white images including Time Capsule
Image - Block Building and Time
Capsule Image - Jai-alai shows how he
extracts meaning from this sediment
and, much like a recycling plant, uses
our communal rubbish as inspirational
raw ingredients for his beguiling-materializations
Dominic Eichler
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
EXHIBITION: JASON DODGE
“WINTER GAMES, BIATHLON”
EXHIBITION DATES:
OPENING:
GALLERY HOURS:
APRIL 27, 2001 – MAY 26, 2001
FRIDAY APRIL 27TH
6 – 8 PM
TUESDAY – SATURDAY
10 – 6 PM
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION:
Jason Dodge’s third solo exhibition in New York continues to develop ideas related to
re-design, style, and emotional narrative. “Winter Games, Biathlon” follows a series of
exhibitions and projects over the past year in Sweden, Japan, Germany, and New York
that use sports and sporting as an accidental metaphor or parallel to emotional
narrative. This exhibition focuses on the biathlon – a winter sporting event of crosscountry skiing and target shooting. Although the combination of endurance and
accuracy are seemingly in conflict with each other, it is the requirement of the
biathlete. The athlete must ski a distance of 20 km, stopping five times to shoot a rifle
at targets placed 150 meters away. To have the required marksmanship, the trigger
needs to be pulled in a moment between heartbeats. The true skill of a biathlete is the
ability to control their own pulse, by slowing down their heartbeat dramatically over
only a few seconds while the event clock ticks away - missing the targets is penalized
by adding distance to the course.
This exhibition consists of seven new artworks including: posters, targets, a speaker,
and other elements related to the biathlon directly and peripherally. The form of the
works are in part inspired by such disparate sources as Marcel Duchamp, 1970’s
textile print design, 1960’s European suburban architecture, and the 1968 Mexico
City Olympic Games.
FOR FURTHER EXHIBITION INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT THE GALLERY AT
TEL. 212 645 7335 FAX. 212 645 7835 E-MAIL. caseykaplan@aol.com
NEXT EXHIBITION: THE WEDDING SHOW
JUNE 1 – JULY 27, 2001
AMY ADLER, JEFF BURTON, NATHAN CARTER, MILES COOLIDGE, JASON DODGE,
TRISHA DONNELLY, CEAL FLOYER, PAMELA FRASER, ANNA GASKELL, LIAM GILLICK,
ANNIKA VON HAUSSWOLFF, CARSTEN HÖLLER, JONATHAN MONK, SIMON STARLING, ANNIKA
STRÖM, JAMES WHITE & TIM SHEWARD, KAREN YASINSKY
for immediate release
exhibition:
Jason Dodge
January 14 – February 11, 2000
exhibition description:
This exhibition is the second solo show in New York for the artist Jason Dodge. The exhibition is entitled
with a telegram ambiguous as to whether it has been sent or received – “It did not seem impossible stop
It was as if we could lose ourselves forever stop I hate the desperation of always trying to picture you stop
How long should I wait here stop How long can we do this” stop
Dodge’s previous one-person shows in Basel, Switzerland at ART/30/Basel and Stockholm, Sweden
at the Moderna Museet Projekt, are connected to this exhibition’s central themes of international travel,
luxury, decadence, and heartbreak.
This exhibition consists of five sculptural works that incorporate accoutrements from a fictional palace
hotel in rural France. Elements contained in the sculptures range from something casually thrown away or
overlooked, such as: match books, reservation cards, the wrapping dry cleaning is returned in, to more
luxurious items that reflect a lifestyle like specially designed mats for couples to sunbathe within the confines of the hotel’s gardens, and silk covered folding chairs adorned with the hotel’s logo.
A palace hotel would not seem to change at the whim of fashion. Change trickles in slowly. Designed
elements within a hotel could evoke nostalgia for an aristocratic past, while each redesign brings a more
contemporary esthetic. The conventions of aristocratic life can be manipulated by the addition of someone
beautiful who does not belong – white Prada Sport shoes replacing Tretorns – style allowing women to
wear white after Labor Day – Hermes’ Belgian designer, Martin Magiella, making a coat from a duvet – a
merger of Mercedes and Chrysler – all of which subtly shift a lifestyle never meant to change.
The artwork in this exhibition was in part produced during a residency at IASPIS in Stockholm, Sweden,
and the chairs included in this show were produced in conjunction with Krabbesholm Højskole in Skive,
Denmark.
ART IN REVIEW
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2000
Jason Dodge
Casey Kaplan Gallery
48 Greene Street
SoHo
Through Feb. 11
Here’s a worthwhile goal for the young,
Conceptually inclined artist who is as taken with materials as ideas: Make objects
that don’t have to be explained by your art
dealer. The art dealer in this case did an
admirable job with Mr. Dodge’s second
solo show and its scatterings of familiar
objects in unusual combinations and materials, the most engaging of which is an
Artschwagerian Ping-Pong table made
of real tigerwood. But the gap between
seeing and hearing, between what comes
from the work directly and what is attributed to it, remains. In fact, it may have
widened since Mr. Dodge’s debut two
years ago.
The theme here is the good life and its
kind of absence, and there is the intimation of a failed romance in the show’s
long, wistful telegram-like title. A group
of unblemished folding chairs adorned
with impeccably monogrammed silk cushions conjures underattended symposiums
in the hotel ballroom. Nearby a pair of
sunbathing pads with pillows covered in
Burberry plaid are reserved for the absent
lovers. A lion skin scattered with candies
and cigarettes, a custom-made garment
bag and a down comforter spilling out of
its monogrammed paper wrapper, suggests a hurried dressing for dinner. Trees,
wrapped and unwrapped, fake and real,
Ping-Pong table is littered with half-full
partied and moved on.
One needs to be told that Mr. Dodge
has made or had made nearly all of these
commodity fetishization with something
is moral, exorbitantly skilled and very
smart, but who needs to move beyond his
understated fusion of Robert Gober and
a detective, but the clues should be more
fun to look at.
ROBERTA SMITH
JASON DODGE –Walking into this show, you
may feel as though you’ve stumbled into a
scene from “Last Year at Marienbad.” Five
sculptural installations, all set in a fictional
palace hotel in France, present traces of
recent activity–a zebra wood Ping-Pong
table strewn with abandoned glasses, a lion’s skin littered with mints, receipts, and
Hope cigarettes. But the object of desire,
presumably a woman, is conspicuously absent. There’s a seductive elegance to the
objects, but the obsession with life style
(Burberry plaid on su bathing cushions)
smacks of art for the Wallpaper generation. Through Feb. 12. (Kaplan, 48 Greene
St. 226-6131.)
For Immediate Release
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Exhibition:
Jason Dodge
Anders Contrave
Dates:
PART 1 Art 30 Basel Switzerland June 16 - 21
PART 2 Modema Museet Projekt Stockholm Sweden August 26 - October 24
Jason Dodge will present two one man exhibitions entitled Anders Contrave.
Part one with Casey Kaplan as a part of “Art Statements” at Art 30 Basel June 16-21. The
sculptural installation consists of three Roor works and one wall piece that combined take the
form of a partially installed trade show booth - as if left from a previous fair. Anders Contrave
Part two will be at the Modema Museet in Stockholm as a part of the Modema Museet Projekt
1999 from August 26 October 24 which will be a full room installation that converts the 18th
century Vicerie building adjacent to the Museum into a badminton court - evoking something
possibly found in an old world luxury hotel. Although very different, both exhibitions have the
same title “Anders Contrave” a fictitious corporate identity.
While the subject of both installations is easily identified, the subject matter becomes
elusive. Tapping into the mind set of a techno DJ combining samples and original music that
reference varying genres to create something new, Jason Dodge’s installatiol)s dwell on relationships that shift between the familiar and the unfamiliar. An appropriated logo next to an
imagined one can create a friction between stylistic familiarity and alienated detachment. The
recognition of a particular element could be that it evokes a time period, an attitude, or a mood
while each element dislocated from its original context can generate a multiplicity of meanings
that utilize the variability that takes place between recontextualization of specific iconographies, and the temperament of the viewer who ultimately
determines what.that iconography means to them.
Jason Dodge is an artist based in New York who had his first exhibition with the gallery
in April 1998
MODERNA
MUSEET
PROJEKT
26.8 — 24.10 1999
Installation i Prästgården med modell/Installation in Prästgården including model, 1999,
blandteknik/mixed media
JASON DODGE
Installation i Prästgården med modell/Installation in Prästgården including model, 1999, blandteknik/mixed media
Introduction
For Moderna Museet Projekt the artist Jason Dodge transformed the former assembly
room in Prastgarden (the old vicarage), adjacent to Moderna Museet, into a court for a
luxurious variation of badminton. More visual than functional, it provided a space for a
narrative where both beginning and end are not only unknown but also uncertain, and
where alienation and elegance are being combined to shape a beautiful union. The title
of the installation is Anders Contrave, part 2, your description of an impossible scenario
of how we could be together is what made me love you and broke both of our hearts.
In addition to the court, it included chairs and other props as well as live elements on
the opening-day, such as a photo-model wearing the same sport ensemble as that in the
installation. Anders Contrave, part 1, which was shown in June 1999 at Art 30 Basel, was
reminiscent of a fair booth in which various practical and decadent objects had been left
behind from the previous fair.
Installation i Prästgården med modell/Installation in Prästgården including model, 1999,
blandteknik/mixed media
Jason Dodge’s beautifully executed sculptural installations oscillate between the known
and the unknown. He may combine borrowed logotypes with invented ones, much like a
techno DJ mixes appropriated music with original versions. The signs Jason Dodge uses
are mostly from 20th century design history, for example, Karel Marten’s telephone card
and the logotype for the Swiss Expo of 1964, and they often allude to these seductive
qualities of design, contrasted with the kind of design that appears on tickets, in grocery
stores and other places where carefully considered design is less expected. He has even
made his own design for the 500 Euro note. His designs can recall memories of a specific event or evoke the mood or atmosphere of a particular period of time. In this way
the familiar is given a new context, which in its turn lead to many new meanings where
both a collective memory and the viewer’s personality play important roles.
Anders Contrave is the name of the fictive enterprise Jason Dodge uses as a model
for how exoticism can function. In a previous exhibition in the gallery Casey Kaplan in
New York in May 1998, journeys of discovery composed the model for exoticism. In both
cases our expectations of a certain culture or subject area are focused upon - how
these expectations are satisfied or contradicted. In Anders Contrave, parts 1 and 2, even
Europe and the European cultural heritage, including aristocracy and royalty, can be seen
as exotic. And as so often in this artist’s work, here too we find absurd and cruel elements, and a high emotional temperature in the set tableaux.
Maria Lind
Anders Contrave, del 2/part 2, your description of an impossible scenario of how we could be together
is what made me love you and broke both our hearts, blandteknik/mixed media, Moderna Museet
Projekt, Prästgården 1999
Anders Contrave, del 2/part 2
Jason Dodge: Exquisite Acts of Cruelty
Scenario I: Basel
Weeks have passed since the end of the fair. Since it was now the off-season for trade shows,
there was no immediate imperative to remove the left-over display items, the residual effects of
yet another comm~rcial exposition. Yet, it was odd that no one had returned to retrieve the slick
merchandising system used to promote Anders Contrave, the multi-national, neo-European corporation that so dominated its competitors at the fair. Its white and yellow display barrier of
molded plastic, graced with strips of netting, remains in place - only now delineating an empty
space. Vinyl sheeting and other elements from the information kiosk lie folded in a heap on the
floor. The company logo - a silhouette of a swan inscribed within an attenuated oval - still hangs
on the wall accompanied by a portrait of Mr. Contrave himself, sporting his signature bow tie, trim
moustache, and frameless glasses: his benevolent smile assuring prospective customers of product
excellence and quality control. But stranger still are the remnants from some seemingly afterhours tryst: bedding from the Continental Savoy Hotel discarded lingerie and plumed silk wrap,
half-drunk morning orange juice, and a half-smoked pack of cigarettes. The pillowcase and shawl
- both monogrammed with the initials “SO” in a luxuriously curving script- suggest that their owner
resides at the Savoy - one of her many homes away from home. The pieces of crumpled hotel
stationery littering the bed represent her rejected attempts to pen an afterthought, a coldly polite
but emphatic adieu. It remains a mystery whether the completed letter was ever sent.
Scenario 1/: Stockholm
The games must have just ended. The badminton court - sized for singles only - is empty, but
the changing area is strewn with a woman’s reguldtion white clothing, Adidas sneakers, and
worn panties, along with her racket and shuttlecock. Once again, the monogram “SO” appears;
here it is inscribed, white on white, on the badminton skirt. An empty Parmalat orange juice container, cigarettes, and extra towels lie among a few, casually placed, potted plants. Folding
wooden chairs, with White slip covers embroidered with white shuttlecocks, lie in disarray in both
the lady’s changing room and on the court. The event - whether a tournament or an informal
competition - seems to have been left in haste. It is unclear if the recreation site was so hastily abandoned because something unpleasant occurred or because the female player - whose
forsaken belongings bespeak a swift departure - had some place far more enticing to go after the
game.
Scene of the Crime. A Fiction of Style
These two tableaux - each ‘alluding to some oddly familiar state of mind through an ever elusive
narrative - constitute Jason Dodge’s recent Anders Contrave project. Spread over two solo exhibitions, a presentation at the Basel Art Fair and a site-specific installation created for Prastgarden
(the old vicarage) used by the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Anders Contrave tells a story of
exoticism, nostalgia, and desire. Unlike conventional narrative, which relies on linear development
to communicate a plot line, Dodge constructs his sculptural fictions through assemblages of quo
Anders Contrave, del 2/part 2
tidian objects, fabricated situations, and recognizable elements of design. His installations function like stage sets, empty, save for props and the abbreviated architectural codes that signify
specific lifestyles, geographic locations, and historical periods. Whilst the actors are absent, their
presence is intimated through an assortment of accouterments that begins to d scribe who
they might be and what they have done. Dodge’s aesthetic is a forensic one. His tableaux are
composed of clues and traces of past events; they invite the inquisitive mind, the voyeuristic
sleuth, to reconstruct what might have happened and to whom. Casting his viewer in the role
of detective, Dodge creates beautifully crafted and seductive crime scenes that inhabit the past
tense. What this viewer encounters are relics from a history of previous occurrences, emotional
acts, and impassioned misdeeds.
As is the case with forensic evidence, separate items, no matter how insignificant, only take on
meaning through their relationship with and proximity to other such objects. A lipstick-stained
cigarette, a crumpled letter, a half-consumed container of orange juice, worn and discarded
underwear, and a tumbled chair become the narrative components of a story waiting to be told.
Making an analogy between the composite nature of his work and “sampling” - the DJ art of
mixing disparate music sources into a mosaic of sound - Dodge explains that the “relationship
between elements is where the meaning lies.” Until the pieces of the puzzle are brought together into a coherent image, the signifying faculty of each component lies dormant. Nevertheless, every aspect of the artist’s installations radiates with potential, with content waiting to be
deciphered. But Dodge complicates the situation beyond the already enticingly cryptic nature of
his enterprise by deliberately introducing a layer of subterfuge. Extending the metaphorical and
tactical references to the scene of the crime here, it can be said that the artist perpetrates his
work through deception and visual betrayal.
Anders Contrave, del 2/part 2
An astute student of the history of design, Dodge invents and fabricates his own products,
logos, and fashion items by freely mixing well-known and, in some cases, classic designs. A brochure he issued at the premiere of Anders Contrave, for instance, inventories concepts behind
the work, many of which are simply corporations recognized for their design achievements: Gucci, Citroen, IBM, Louis Vuitton, Braun, Knoll International, Ericsson, and Olivetti, among others.
Having once fashioned his own version of the new EEC currency for an earlier exhibition, Dodge
appropriates and reconstitutes society’s most choice commercial forms Nothing is sacred under
his discerning eye. In this exhibition project, the fabricated items - such as the Parmalat orange
juice, the Continental Savoy of New Delhi, Innsbruck stationery and linens, and the packs of
Shepherd cigarettes - are all vaguely recognizable. In fact, there is an uncanny quality in their
familiarity. But since they are total inventions, they oscillate provocatively between reality and
fiction. To further obscure the matter, Dodge also includes already existing objects. In an earlier
work, a Nokia cell phone made an appearance; here real Adidas sneakers share the space with
fantasy commodities in a hybridized environment of readymades and fabrications. Parmalat,
while being a packager of milk products and tomato sauce, does not, in fact, distribute orange
juice. And Anders Contrave, the corporate umbrella under which the two-part project situates
itself, is a complete fantasy (granted, Dodge borrowed the name from Oerlikon Contraves, a
multinational Zurich-based corporation specializing in the development, production, sale, and
technical support of weapon systems for gun and missile-based air defense).
But in its incarnation as the binding element of the artwork, Anders Contrave - its profile, iden23 tity, and function - remains a mystery. The name and logo, which Dodge has insidiously
crafted and even woven into the plastic packing materials used in Basel, conjure up well-known
international corporate identities: Merrill Lynch, Hewlett Packard, Daimler Benz, Conde Nast. One
feelsin the presence of a powerful, blue-chip, financial entity whose brand - whatever that may be
plays a homogenizing role in global economies. Wherever you are in the world, Anders Contrave,
will serve you.
Dodge has always been interested in how the fictions of style can dictate meaning. As he ‘explains it, his entire praxis has involved” creating a narrative just through style.” Mining the
worlds of fashion, film, popular music, industrial design, graphic design, and architecture, Dodge
emulates stylistic icons that signify aspects of our cultural value system. What does it mean for
instance, that allover the world, women of means are carrying Fendi baguettes or wearing Gucci
boots) What did Raymond Lowey’s streamlined designs for everything from telephones to ocean
liners say about modernism’s utopian vision? How will Microsoft’s Windows icons affect the way
future generations comprehend visual data? By confiscating and blending diverse styles - the
Mercedes Benz font for the Anders Contrave logo, for instance, Dodge is not staging a critique
of corporate culture. Rather, he is embracing the way brand identities or stylistic trends function
as contemporary mythologies in the sense put forward by Roland Barthes, who analyze~ “collective representations as sign systems” in order to “account in detail for the mystification which
transforms petit-bourgeois culture into a universal nature.” The universalizing phenomenon of style
fascinates Dodge and the idea of it permeates his work. In describing this social and cultural
reality, he pondered the fact that just about anyone could smoke the same brand of cigarettes
as Gwyneth Paltrow, thus sharing in or, at least, approximating the glamour associated with her.
Exoticism of the Other
In this exhibition project. Dodge alludes to the homogenizing trends engulfing the European
Union since its official inauguration in Maastricht in 1992. The presence of Anders Contrave in
both Basel and Stockholm as a uniform corporate entity, despite the innate cultural and social
differences between the two cities, betokens the inevitable outcome of centralization. Although
the two shows took place sequentially, Dodge imagined them occurring simultaneously, which
would only have underscored the equivalency of experience that he was orchestrating. When
encountered from within, a trend or lifestyle is seductive and all-encompassing (hence its mythic
capabilities), but when witnessed from afar, it appears foreign, exotic, and Other. According to
Dodge, even Europe, the very locus of Western civilization, can be exoticized when examined
from a distance. And in Anders Contrave, he turns his telescopic lens on the new European
Union just to prove his point.
Anders Contrave, del 2/part 2
In his exhibition brochure text, Dodge proposes a metaphor for the exotic situation of exoticism
that he is exploring in the two installations, which involves Josephine Baker, the African-American
vaudeville performer who became the toast of 1920s Paris, and Adolf Loos, the Austrian architect
whom she commissioned to design her home. This portion of his conceptual inventory reads:
“Adolf Loos in conversation with Josephine Baker - Josephine Baker reclines in a day bed - Adolf
Loos sits in a small wooden chair of his design.” A study in opposites - the outrageous Baker
who danced nude at the Folies-Bergere and owned her own nightclub, which she supervised with
a pet leopard, and the prim Loos, who specialized in cloistered interior spaces - provides the
perfect scenario for the exoticizing gaze. Baker played this gaze as her trump card, and the new
house would reflect the voyeurism at the heart of her professional success. Loos’s design for her
includes a grand, double-height, indoor swimming pool with entry on the second story. The first
level contains a glass-paneled walkway that would provide windows onto the depths of the pool
so that visitors could observe Baker frolicking underwater. According to architectural theorist
Beatriz Colomina, the house is premised on the act of looking. “But between this gaze and its
object,” she explains, “ ... is a screen of glass and water, which renders the body inaccessible. The
swimming pool is lit from above, by a skylight, so that inside it the windows would reappear as
reflective surfaces, impeding the swimmer’s view of the visitors standing in the passages. This
view is the opposite of the panoptic view of a theater box, corresponding, instead, to that of a
peephole, where subject and object cannot simply exchange glances.” For Dodge, this architectural
embodiment of voyeurism - a classic example of 20th-century European design - is the perfect
analogue to his current study of Europe as exoticized Other.
A Tale of Unrequited Love
But this is only half the story. Dodge’s art unfolds to reveal different but related layers of meaning. His sculptural mis-en-scenes in both Basel and Stockholm are narrative structures waiting to
be decoded. Though elusive, each staged scenario suggests a very specific ambience of old-world
decadence and faded elegance. The monogrammed hotel linens and plumed stole invoke an era
of steamer trunks, transatlantic cruise ships, and prohibition night clubs. Badminton itself was
once an upper-class activity, introduced to England around 1873 through its colonial outposts in
India. During its heyday in the 1930s, the game was embraced by Hollywood celebrities such as
Ginger Rogers, Claudette Colbert and Bette Davis. Joan Crawford was supposedly so enamored of
badminton that she would play on rainy days wearing only a bathing suit. In 1934, the International Badminton Federation was established, and national championships were held in nine countries including Sweden. Perhaps Dodge’s installation in Stockholm intentionally references
this period, evoking nostalgia as yet another stylistic ploy. The subtitles he assigns to works within
the Anders Contrave installations hint at possible plot developments and provide evidence
for character motivation. The Basel piece composed of bedding and a woman’s intimate belongings is titled, she wanted to convince him not to love her, and the entire Stockholm installation
bears the subtitle, your description of an impossible scenario of how we could be together is
what made me love you C}nd broke both our hearts.
As impossible as it is to determine who the mysterious “SO” might be - or whether, in fact, it is
even one person - the female character is clearly in the business of breaking hearts. One can
imagine an unrivaled beauty who goes to exquisite lengths to torture her various lovers, who all
return for more emotional abuse. Her cruelty and indifference are part of the attraction. Dodge
offers this glimpse of unrequited love less for narrative effect than as yet another example of universal experience - hence his proposal that the Basel and Stockholm installations be construed as
simultaneous events. “SO,” therefore, becomes an idea, an emblem for the melancholy of unfulfilled desire. In this light, Anders Contrave emerges as a landscape of emotional desolation,
Anders Contrave, del 2/part 2
Anders Contrave, del 1/part 1, 1999, blandteknik/ mixed media
She is kissing just for practice, 1999, blandteknik/ mixed media
Anders Contrave, del 1/part 1 she wanted to convince her not to love her, 1999,
blandteknik/ mixed media
Anders Contrave, del 1/part 1 Information Stand, 1999, blandteknik/ mixed media
a terrain across which every person at one point in his or her life will travel. By articulating the
sadness of style, Dodge has achieved one of his primary aesthetic and conceptual goals: to be
able, at the end of the century, to create a work of art that can make someone cry.
Nancy Spector
THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, MAY 1, 1998
ART IN REVIEW
Jason Dodge
Casey Kaplan
48 Greene Street
SoHo
Through May 23
Jason Dodge offers a fresh combination of sly conceptualism and
Steinbach, Ashley Bickerton and
Andrea Zittel come to mind, but
-
-
miniaturized camp interior equipped
a polar bear rug, a leather map portfolio and a cell phone, all basking in
the light of an ultramodern stainless
Of course these things have nothRather,they simulate high-end cataside the soul-pinching constraints of
KEN JOHNSON
For Immediate Release
Exhibition:
Jason Dodge
“Helsinki”
Dates:
April 17 - May 23, 1998
opening: Friday April 17th, 6-8 pm
gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10-6 pm
Exhibition Description:
Isolation, exoticism, luxury and style are at the forefront of Jason Dodge’s first solo
exhibition, “Helsinki”. “Helsinki” consists of eight autonomous sculptures that rely on
each other to construct an esoteric narrative about an excursion of a misguided ornithologist
who has traveled to Finland. Individually each object dwells on the stylistic signifiers that
evoke cultural narratives associated with different modes of twentieth century design. With
references from Adolf Laos to Helmut Lang, the sculptures appear simultaneously
nostalgic and contemporary calling on the lens current design has provided in looking at
disparate decades and historical moments in a way that is unmistakably rooted in late
1990’s sensibility.
siksi
the nordic art review
vol. XIII no. 2 summer 1998
Gregory Williams on a
misguided ornithologist
Jason Dodge, Helsinki, Casey Kaplan
Gallery, New York
If Modernism’s legendary tug-of war
between form and function were to be
re-enacted according to the rules of Jason Dodge’s recent sculptural project,
Helsinki, form would have its day of
works possess a distinct air of purpose,
it quickly becomes clear that any relation they may have to objects we live
and work with is tentative at best.
Taken as a group, the eight works
that make up Helsinki interact with
one another to tell a story about a
“misguided ornithologist who has
traveled to Finland,” according to the
press release. Without this information, a vague understanding of the
interests might be acquired by a very
open-minded and inquisitive viewer.
Areference to birds, for instance, can
be found in a logo on the satellite dish
of the Bird Tracking System. Also,
in order to give a loose indication of
setting, two ofthe pieces are partially
covered in fake snow who hasn’t heard
of the harsh Nordic climate while
“Helsinki” is stenciled on the wooden
case of the Parachute.
In general, the theme of a scienous gadgets and accessories are strewn
about as if they were part of a base
camp.
Yet any story that can be cobbled
together from these individual pieces
is buried under the visual confusion
trying to construct an image of the
ornithologist by naming the task performed by each apparatus, the viewer’s
attention is drawn from the objects’
perceived use value toward a wide
Jason Dodge, Storage, 1997-98, mixed media.
Dodge’s investigation: how the outline
of a narrative provides the platform
upon which the seductive power
of style is demonstrated. And it is
through the mechanics of display that
Helsinki communicates an obsession
with form as the primary stylistic
indicator. The Bird Tracking System,
for instance, does not simply
rest on the ground; it is given its
lamp, which, along with the synthetic
snow, lend the ensemble the look of a
grouping plays off the other to enhance
twentieth-century design. Adegree of
designers and architects is called for
in order to detect the referencessome
more subtle than others-to the corporate logo of Lufthansa, the fabrics
preferred by Helmut Lang and the
structural sensibility of Adolf Loos,
among others.
These brief epiphanies of product
object included-recline on a bed of fur,
seemingly waiting to be picked up,
touched, handled. Their sensuousness
reveals that Dodge’s knowledge of
style is gleaned through his own process offabrication. In order to produce
these embodiments of desire, he must
proportions, polishing the contours,
painting the surfaces and stitching the
fabric. All of which speaks to a deepseated longing to surround oneself
with attractive, well-made things
that one knows inside and out. How
better to comprehend your world than
to build it yourself? For Dodge, the
compulsion to create his own environment results in objects that move
of sculpture and design. Part of the
that ofthe objects’ producer. In Tent
(cut-away view), a number of small
items-a leather folder containing maps,
some sort of syringe, a scale and a
Nokia cell phone, the only ‘found’
another of its components resembles a
of Minimalism while referring to Ikea
style, stackable crate systems. Since
the works are not dependent on any
single, previously artic lated style, the
artist is able to simultaneously assert
his own presence and become more
intimate with the objects of his desire.
There is clearly a current of fetishism
in the terms of a shameless materiality.
piece: titled Snow, it is a sled-like
It consists simply of a sheet of highgrade plywood bent Upwatds at either
places. Whether or not this shape is
meant to indicate a sliding or dragging
function is, in the end, beside the
point. In marveling at its gentle curves
and admiring the patterns made by the
thin layers of wood, we recognize it as
a beautifully crafted, but thoroughly
ineffectual, tool. As a manifestation
of sheer formal fantasy, it makes the
claim that this is a worthy function in
itself.
Gregory Williams
DECEMBER 1998
The Best of 1998
Ronald Jones
8
Jason Dodge, “Helsinki” (Casey
Kaplan, NewYork) Jason Dodge possesses an
extremely light touch considering the stately
and sterile effects of his raw, exaggerated
iconography. In Storage, 1997-98, for example,
pure, uncut style becomes content. Lufthansa
orange, Alvar Aalto’s bent-birch style, and
reference to the new Finnish design collective, Snowcrash are all brought int’o the ‘mix,
producing something that lends new meaning
to “saturation overdose.” Art history and the
history of design will of course be helpful as
one wade into Dodge’s work, but don’t miss
his npds to “Kubrick, Nabokov, and Vonnegut.